Novel Fastest Retransmission and Rate Control Schemes for Improving TCP Performance in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A number of different authors have considered the problem of performance degradation of transmission control protocol (TCP) in wireless ad hoc networks. We herein show that pauses in packet transmission due to packet losses are the fundamental cause of performance degradation of TCP in wireless ad hoc networks. To minimize the duration of packet transmission pauses, we propose a fast retransmission scheme for improving TCP performance in consideration of the inter-operability of previously deployed TCPs in wireless ad hoc networks. We also propose an additional rate control scheme for TCPs to reduce the probability of packet contention. Using OPNET and NS2 simulations, we show that our proposed schemes can provide a much better performance than conventional TCPs.     

Packet Recycling and Delayed ACK for Improving the Performance of TCP over MANETs

Most of the schemes that were proposed to improve the performance of transmission control protocol (TCP) over mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are based on a feedback from the network, which can be expensive (require extra bandwidth) and unreliable. Moreover, most of these schemes consider only one cause of packet loss. They also resume operation based on the same stand-by parameters that might vary in the new route. Therefore, we propose two techniques for improving the performance of TCP over MANETs. The first one, called TCP with packet recycling (TCP-PR), allows the nodes to recycle the packets instead of dropping them after reaching the retransmission limit at the MAC layer. In the second technique, which is called TCP with adaptive delay window (TCP-ADW), the receiver delays sending TCP ACK for a certain time that is dynamically changed according to the congestion window and the trip time of the received packet. TCP-PR and TCP-ADW are simple, easy to implement, do not require network feedback, compatible with the standard TCP, and do not require distinguishing between the causes of packet loss. Our thorough simulations show that the integration of our two techniques improves the performance of TCP over MANETs.     

The impact of multihop wireless channel on TCP performance

This paper studies TCP performance in a stationary multihop wireless network using IEEE 802.11 for channel access control. We first show that, given a specific network topology and flow patterns, there exists an optimal window size W* at which TCP achieves the highest throughput via maximum spatial reuse of the shared wireless channel. However, TCP grows its window size much larger than W* leading to throughput reduction. We then explain the TCP throughput decrease using our observations and analysis of the packet loss in an overloaded multihop wireless network. We find out that the network overload is typically first signified by packet drops due to wireless link-layer contention, rather than buffer overflow-induced losses observed in the wired Internet. As the offered load increases, the probability of packet drops due to link contention also increases, and eventually saturates. Unfortunately the link-layer drop probability is insufficient to keep the TCP window size around W'*. We model and analyze the link contention behavior, based on which we propose link RED that fine-tunes the link-layer packet dropping probability to stabilize the TCP window size around W*. We further devise adaptive pacing to better coordinate channel access along the packet forwarding path. Our simulations demonstrate 5 to 30 percent improvement of TCP throughput using the proposed two techniques.     

DTPA: A Reliable Datagram Transport Protocol over Ad Hoc Networks

As a prevalent reliable transport protocol in the Internet, TCP uses two key functions: AIMD (Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease) congestion control and cumulative ACK technique to guarantee delivery. However, with these two functions, TCP becomes lowly efficient in ad hoc networks that have a much lower BDP and frequent packet losses due to various reasons, since TCP adjusts its transmission window based on packet losses. In this paper, we present that, provided that the BDP is very small, any AIMD-style congestion control is costly and hence not necessary for ad hoc networks. On the contrary, a technique to guarantee reliable transmission and to recover packet losses plays a more critical role in the design of a transport protocol over ad hoc networks. With this basis, we propose a novel and effective datagram-oriented end-to-end reliable transport protocol for ad hoc networks, which we call DTPA. The proposed scheme incorporates a fixed-size window based flow control and a cumulative bit-vector based selective ACK strategy. A mathematical model is developed to evaluate the performance of DTPA and to determine the optimum transmission window used in DTPA. The protocol is verified using GloMoSim. The simulation results show that our proposal substantially improves the network performance.     

Evaluating the communication performance of an ad hoc wirelessnetwork

Adaptive and self-organizing wireless networks are gaining in popularity. Several media access and routing protocols were proposed for such networks and the performance of such protocols were evaluated based on simulations. In this paper, we evaluate the practicality of realizing an ad hoc wireless network and investigate on performance issues. Several mobile computers were enhanced with ad hoc routing capability and were deployed in an outdoor environment and communication performance associated with ad hoc communications were evaluated. These computers periodically send beacons to their neighbors to declare their presence. We examined the impact of varying packet size, beaconing interval, and route hop count on route discovery time, communication throughput, end-to-end delay, and packet loss. We had also performed mobility experiments and evaluated the route reconstruction time incurred. File transfer times associated with sending information reliably (via TCP) over multihop wireless links are also presented. The experimental results obtained revealed that it is feasible to augment existing wireless computers with ad hoc networking capability. End-to-end performance in ad hoc routes are less affected by beaconing intervals than packet size or route length. Similarly, communication throughput is more dependent on packet size and route length with the exception at very high beaconing frequencies. Packet loss, on the other hand, is not significantly affected by packet size, route length or beaconing frequency. Finally, route discovery time in ad hoc wireless networks are more dependent on channel conditions and route length than variations in beaconing intervals     

TCP Performance in IEEE 802.11-Based Ad Hoc Networks with Multiple Wireless Lossy Links

We propose a packet-level model to investigate the impact of channel error on the transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over IEEE-802.11-based multihop wireless networks. A Markov renewal approach is used to analyze the behavior of TCP Reno and TCP Impatient NewReno. Compared to previous work, our main contributions are listed as follows: 1) modeling multiple lossy links, 2) investigating the interactions among TCP, Internet Protocol (IP), and media access control (MAC) protocol layers, specifically the impact of 802.11 MAC protocol and dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol on TCP throughput performance, 3) considering the spatial reuse property of the wireless channel, the model takes into account the different proportions between the interference range and transmission range, and 4) adopting more accurate and realistic analysis to the fast recovery process and showing the dependency of throughput and the risk of experiencing successive fast retransmits and timeouts on the packet error probability. The analytical results are validated against simulation results by using GloMoSim. The results show that the impact of the channel error is reduced significantly due to the packet retransmissions on a per-hop basis and a small bandwidth delay product of ad hoc networks. The TCP throughput always deteriorates less than ~ 10 percent, with a packet error rate ranging from 0 to 0.1. Our model also provides a theoretical basis for designing an optimum long retry limit for IEEE 802.11 in ad hoc networks.     

Taking Full Advantage of Multiuser Diversity in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Multiuser diversity has been shown to increase the throughput of mobile ad hoc wireless networks (MANETs) when compared to fixed wireless networks. This paper addresses a multiuser diversity strategy that permits one of multiple one-time relays to deliver a packet to its destination. We show that the throughput of the original single one-time relay strategy is preserved by our multi-copy technique. The reason behind achieving the same asymptotic throughput is the fact that, as we demonstrate in this paper, interference for communicating among closest neighbors is bounded for different channel path losses, even when goes to infinity. We show that a significant delay reduction is possible by multi-copy relaying when is finite. Furthermore, we find that the average delay and delay variance for both the one and multi-copy relay strategies scale like and , respectively. We derive an approximation of the delay for multi-copy forwarding scheme and demonstrate that this approximation is very close to simulation results in MANET systems.     

An Adaptive Delayed Acknowledgment Strategy to Improve TCP Performance in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

In multi-hop wireless networks, transmission control protocol (TCP) suffers from performance deterioration due to poor wireless channel characteristics. Earlier studies have shown that the small TCP acknowledgments consume as much wireless resources as the long TCP data packets. Moreover, generating an acknowledgment (ACK) for each incoming data packet reduces the performance of TCP. The main factor affecting TCP performance in multi-hop wireless networks is the contention and collision between ACK and data packets that share the same path. Thus, lowering the number of ACKs using the delayed acknowledgment option defined in IETF RFC 1122 will improve TCP performance. However, large cumulative ACKs will induce packet loss due to retransmission time-out at the sender side of TCP. Motivated by this understanding, we propose a new TCP receiver with an adaptive delayed ACK strategy to improve TCP performance in multi-hop wireless networks. Extensive simulations have been done to prove and evaluate our strategy over different topologies. The simulation results demonstrate that our strategy can improve TCP performance significantly.     

A hotspot mitigation protocol for ad hoc networks

Hotspots represent transient but highly congested regions in wireless ad hoc networks that result in increased packet loss, end-to-end delay, and out-of-order packets delivery. We present a simple, effective, and scalable hotspot mitigation protocol (HMP) where mobile nodes independently monitor local buffer occupancy, packet loss, and MAC contention and delay conditions, and take local actions in response to the emergence of hotspots, such as, suppressing new route requests and rate controlling TCP flows. We use analysis, simulation, and experimental results from a wireless testbed to demonstrate the effectiveness of HMP in mobile ad hoc networks. HMP balances resource consumption among neighboring nodes, and improves end-to-end throughput, delay, and packet loss. Our results indicate that HMP can also improve the network connectivity preventing premature network partitions. We present analysis of hotspots, and the detailed design of HMP. We evaluate the protocol’s ability to effectively mitigate hotspots in mobile ad hoc networks that are based on on-demand and proactive routing protocols.     

An energy-efficient MAC protocol based on IEEE 802.11 in wireless ad hoc networks

Energy efficiency is a measure of the performance of IEEE 802.11 wireless multihop ad hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11 standard, currently used in wireless multihop ad hoc networks, wastes bandwidth capacity and energy resources because of many collisions. Therefore, controlling the contention window size at a given node will increase not only the operating life of the battery but also the overall system capacity. It is essential to develop effective backoff schemes for saving power in IEEE 802.11 wireless multihop ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient backoff scheme and evaluate its performance in an ad hoc network. Our contention window mechanism devised by us grants a node access to a channel on the basis of the node’s percentage of residual energy. We use both an analytical model and simulation experiments to evaluate the effective performance of our scheme in an ad hoc network. Our extensive ns-2-based simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme provides excellent performance in terms of energy goodput, end-to-end goodput, and packet delivery ratio, as well as the end-to-end delay.     

TCP-Gvegas with prediction and adaptation in multi-hop ad hoc networks

TCP Vegas performance can be improved since its rate-based congestion control mechanism could proactively avoid possible congestion and packet losses in multi-hop ad hoc networks. Nevertheless, Vegas cannot make full advantage of available bandwidth to transmit packets since incorrect bandwidth estimates may occur due to frequent topology changes caused by node mobility. This paper proposes an improved TCP Vegas based on the grey prediction theory, named TCP-Gvegas, for multi-hop ad hoc networks, which has the capability of prediction and self-adaption, as well as three enhanced aspects in the phase of congestion avoidance. The lower layers’ parameters are considered in the throughput model to improve the accuracy of theoretical throughput. The prediction of future throughput based on grey prediction is used to promote the online control. The optimal exploration method based on Q-Learning and Round Trip Time quantizer are applied to search for the more reasonable changing size of congestion window. Besides, the convergence analysis of grey prediction by using the Lyapunov’s second method proves that a shorter input data length of prediction implies a faster convergence rate. The simulation results show that the TCP-Gvegas achieves a substantially higher throughput and lower delay than Vegas in multi-hop ad hoc networks.     

ATCP: TCP for mobile ad hoc networks

Transport connections set up in wireless ad hoc networks are plagued by problems such as high bit error rates, frequent route changes, and partitions. If we run the transmission control protocol (TCP) over such connections, the throughput of the connection is observed to be extremely poor because TCP treats lost or delayed acknowledgments as congestion. We present an approach where we implement a thin layer between Internet protocol and standard TCP that corrects these problems and maintains high end-to-end TCP throughput. We have implemented our protocol in FreeBSD, and we present results from extensive experimentation done in an ad hoc network. We show that our solution improves the TCP's throughput by a factor of 2-3     

APS-FeW适用于无线网络的TCP增强方案

TCP的控制隐含了一个假设,即分组丢失都是由网络拥塞引起的,而这一点对于无线网络不成立.因此在无线情况下,会引入了冗余控制,使得传输性能下降.浮点窗口算法(FeW)通过限制TCP的分组注入量,减少冗余控制,在此基础上,提出了改进方案自适应包长算法(APS).仿真数据表明,基于FeW的APS算法(APS-FeW)比FeW算法提升了10%～25%的吞吐量.     

无线自组织网络TCP容量优化

为了计算无线自组织网络中准确的TCP容量,并利用其进行有效的窗口控制,以避免拥塞窗口增长过速的问题,提出一种适用于无线自组织网络TCP容量的优化计算。此方法基于时延和空间复用率,考虑网络中竞争干扰,解决了以往的计算方法对拓扑不能广泛适用的问题。模拟结果显示,基于文章的TCP容量进行拥塞窗口调节,能有效地提高网络的吞吐量。     

A novel learning based solution for efficient data transport in heterogeneous wireless networks

There has been a spectacular growth in the use of wireless networks in recent times and consequently, adapting TCP to the wireless networks is a hot topic of current research. However, most of the existing works proposed for this problem have been designed for specific wireless networks, or they necessitate changes at either the receiver or the intermediate nodes, or at both, because of which their deployment becomes difficult. In this work, we propose a TCP variant which works over both multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks as well as single-hop (last-hop) wireless networks, like Wireless LANs, cellular, and satellite networks. We use a learning based method to dynamically change the congestion window size according to the network conditions. Our protocol does not rely on any explicit feedback from the network and requires only sender-side modifications. Through extensive simulations we show that our protocol achieves the desired goals of performance improvement in goodput, reduction in packet loss, and fairness to the competing flows. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first unified solution for both single-hop and multi-hop wireless networks.     

Enhancing Fairness and Throughput of TCP in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks

Most of the recent research on TCP over heterogeneous wireless networks has concentrated on differentiating between packet drops caused by congestion and link errors, to avoid significant throughput degradations due to the TCP sending window being frequently shut down, in response to packet losses caused not by congestion but by transmission errors over wireless links. However, TCP also exhibits inherent unfairness toward connections with long round-trip times or traversing multiple congested routers. This problem is aggravated by the difference of bit-error rates between wired and wireless links in heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we apply the TCP Bandwidth Allocation (TBA) algorithm, which we have proposed previously, to improve TCP fairness over heterogeneous wireless networks with combined wireless and wireline links. To inform the sender when congestion occurs, we propose to apply Wireless Explicit Congestion Notification (WECN). By controlling the TCP window behavior with TBA and WECN, congestion control and error-loss recovery are effectively separated. Further enhancement is also incorporated to smooth traffic bursts. Simulation results show that not only can the combined TBA and WECN mechanism improve TCP fairness, but it can maintain good throughput performance in the presence of wireless losses as well. A salient feature of TBA is that its main functions are implemented in the access node, thus simplifying the sender-side implementation.     

Performance benchmarking of wireless Web servers

The advent of mobile computers and wireless networks enables the deployment of wireless Web servers and clients in short-lived ad hoc network environments, such as classroom area networks. The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the performance capabilities of wireless Web servers in such an environment. Network traffic measurements are conducted on an in-building IEEE 802.11b wireless ad hoc network, using a wireless-enabled Apache Web server, several wireless clients, and a wireless network traffic analyzer. The experiments focus on the HTTP transaction rate and end-to-end throughput achievable in such an ad hoc network environment, and the impacts of factors such as Web object size, number of clients, and persistent HTTP connections. The results show that the wireless network bottleneck manifests itself in several ways: inefficient HTTP performance, client-side packet losses, server-side packet losses, network thrashing, and unfairness among Web clients. Persistent HTTP connections offer up to 350% improvement in HTTP transaction rate and user-level throughput, while also improving fairness for mobile clients accessing content from a wireless Web server.     

Cross-layer TCP with bitmap error recovery scheme in wireless ad hoc networks

Current TCP is not able to distinguish corruption losses from packet loss events. Hence, high transmission errors and varying inherent latency within a wireless network would cause seriously adverse effects to TCP performance. To improve TCP in IEEE 802.11 multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks, this study proposes an error recovery mechanism based on coordination of TCP and IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols. The simulation results confirm that the proposed error recovery approach could provide a more efficient solution for frequent transmission losses, and enable TCP to distinguish between congestion errors and transmission errors, and thus, to respond with proper remedial actions.     

Cross-Layer Scheduling and Power Control Combined With Adaptive Modulation for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Efficient resource management is a major challenge in the operation of wireless systems, especially energy-constrained ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization framework to jointly design the scheduling and power control in wireless ad hoc networks. We study the system performance by combining scheduling, power control, and adaptive modulation. Specifically, the transmitted power and constellation size are dynamically adapted based on the packet arrival, quality of service (QoS) requirements, power limits, and channel conditions. A key feature of the proposed method is that it facilitates a distributed implementation, which is desirable in wireless ad hoc networks. The performance of our proposed methodology will be investigated in ad hoc networks supporting unicast as well as multicast traffic. Simulation results will show that the proposed scheme achieves significant gains in both the single-hop throughput and power efficiency compared with the existing method, which implements the scheduling through a central controller, and adopts power control with fixed modulation