Throughput Analysis and Measurements in IEEE 802.11 WLANs with TCP and UDP Traffic Flows

There is a vast literature on the throughput analysis of the IEEE 802.11 media access control (MAC) protocol. However, very little has been done on investigating the interplay between the collision avoidance mechanisms of the 802.11 MAC protocol and the dynamics of upper layer transport protocols. In this paper, we tackle this issue from an analytical, simulative, and experimental perspective. Specifically, we develop Markov chain models to compute the distribution of the number of active stations in an 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) when long-lived transmission control protocol (TCP) connections compete with finite-load user datagram protocol (UDP) flows. By embedding these distributions in the MAC protocol modeling, we derive approximate but accurate expressions of the TCP and UDP throughput. We validate the model accuracy through performance tests carried out in a real WLAN for a wide range of configurations. Our analytical model and the supporting experimental outcomes show that 1) the total TCP throughput is basically independent of the number of open TCP connections and the aggregate TCP traffic can be equivalently modeled as two saturated flows; and 2) in the saturated regime, n UDP flows obtain about n times the aggregate throughput achieved by the TCP flows, which is independent of the overall number of persistent TCP connections.     

On the impact of link layer retransmission schemes on TCP over 4G satellite links

We study the impact of reliability mechanisms introduced at the link layer on the performance of transport protocols in the context of 4G satellite links. Specifically, we design a software module that performs realistic analysis of the network performance, by utilizing real physical layer traces of a 4G satellite service. Based on these traces, our software module produces equivalent link layer traces, as a function of the chosen link layer reliability mechanism. We further utilize the link layer traces within the ns‐2 network simulator to evaluate the impact of link layer schemes on the performance of selected Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) variants. We consider erasure coding, selective‐repeat automatic request (ARQ) and hybrid‐ARQ link layer mechanisms, and TCP Cubic, Compound, Hybla, New Reno and Westwood. We show that, for all target TCP variants, when the throughput of the transport protocol is close to the channel capacity, using the ARQ mechanism is most beneficial for TCP performance improvement. In conditions where the physical channel error rate is high, hybrid‐ARQ results in the best performance for all TCP variants considered, with up to 22% improvements compared to other schemes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance study of link layer and MAC layer protocols to support TCP in 3G CDMA systems

Providing support for TCP with good quality link connection is a key issue for future wireless networks in which Internet access is going to be one of the most important data services. A number of schemes have been proposed in literature to improve the TCP performance over wireless links. In this paper, we study the performance of a particular combination of link layer protocol (e.g., radio link protocol or RLP) and MAC retransmissions to support the TCP connections over third generation (3G) wireless CDMA networks. We specifically investigate two metrics - the packet error rate and the delay provided by RLP and MAC retransmissions - both of which are important for TCP performance. For independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) error channels, we propose an analytical model for RLP performance with MAC retransmission. The segmentation of TCP/IP packets into smaller RLP frames, as well as the RLP buffering process, is modeled using a Markov chain. For correlated fading channels, we introduce an analytical metric called RLP retransmission efficiency. We show that: 1) the RLP frame size has significant impact on the overall 3G system performance, 2) MAC layer retransmissions significantly improve the TCP performance, and 3) the RLP retransmission scheme performs better in highly correlated channels, while other scheme performs better in low correlated channels. Simulation results also confirm these conclusions.     

Cross-layer resource allocation for integrated Voice/Data traffic in wireless cellular networks

A major task in next-generation wireless cellular networks is provisioning of quality of service (QoS) over the bandwidth limited and error-prone wireless link. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer design scheme to provide QoS for voice and data traffic in wireless cellular networks with differentiated services (DiffServ) backbone. The scheme combines the transport layer protocols and link layer resource allocation to both guarantee the QoS requirements in the transport layer and achieve efficient resource utilization in the link layer. Optimal resource allocation problems for voice and data flows are formulated to guarantee pre-specified QoS with minimal required resources. For integrated voice/data traffic in a cell, a hybrid time-division/code-division medium access control (MAC) scheme is presented to achieve efficient multiplexing. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cross-layer approach.     

Multi-layer loss recovery in TCP over optical burst-switched networks

It is well-known that the bufferless nature of optical burst-switching (OBS) networks cause random burst loss even at low traffic loads. When TCP is used over OBS, these random losses make the TCP sender decrease its congestion window even though the network may not be congested. This results in significant TCP throughput degradation. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer loss-recovery approach with automatic retransmission request (ARQ) and Snoop for OBS networks given that TCP is used at the transport layer. We evaluate the performance of Snoop and ARQ at the lower layer over a hybrid IP-OBS network. Based on the simulation results, the proposed multi-layer hybrid ARQ + Snoop approach outperforms all other approaches even at high loss probability. We developed an analytical model for end-to-end TCP throughput and verified the model with simulation results.     

TCP over satellite links: Problems and solutions

Satellite communications are destined to play an important role in future telecommunications infrastructure. There is in particular an increasing interest in transporting Internet traffic over satellite links. Many studies have shown that TCP has a poor performance in the context of satellite communications. This is due to many factors inherent to satellite communications and for which TCP – originally designed for terrestrial networks – is inadequate. Our study is an overview of the many factors limiting TCP performance over a satellite link and the different solutions proposed to address the problem. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Enhancing satellite broadcasting services using multiresolutionmodulations

In this paper we propose to take advantage of the energy link margin that can exist of satellite connections to enrich the DVB-S services with Web-like interactive services. The exploitation of such a margin is obtained by using multiresolution modulation techniques. The system architecture analysed is asymmetrical, composed of a satellite forward link and a narrowband terrestrial reverse link. ATM is adopted to support different QoS for different types of information delivered. The satellite propagation delay and the traffic and congestion control of ATM suggest to modify the slow start and the congestion avoidance of the TCP. Our approach is based on the combination of a fixed window flow control at the transport layer with the ATM traffic and congestion control. Our analysis shows that the system performance is satisfactory if some bounds of the TCP buffer size are respected and the spacing of the resource management cells is within a given range of values     

Performance impact of interlayer dependence in infrastructure WLANs

Widespread deployment of infrastructure WLANs has made Wi-Fi an integral part of today's Internet access technology. Despite its crucial role in affecting end-to-end performance, past research has focused on MAC protocol enhancement, analysis, and simulation-based performance evaluation without sufficient consideration for modeling inaccuracies stemming from interlayer dependencies, including physical layer diversity, that significantly impact performance. We take a fresh look at IEEE 802.11 WLANs and using experiment, simulation, and analysis demonstrate its surprisingly agile performance traits. Our findings are two-fold. First, contention-based MAC throughput degrades gracefully under congested conditions, enabled by physical layer channel diversity that reduces the effective level of MAC contention. In contrast, fairness degrades and jitter increases significantly at a critical offered load. This duality obviates the need for link layer flow control for throughput improvement. Second, TCP-over-WLAN achieves high throughput commensurate with that of wireline TCP under saturated conditions, challenging the widely held perception that TCP throughput fares poorly over WLANs when subject to heavy contention. We show that TCP-over-WLAN prowess is facilitated by the self-regulating actions of DCF and TCP feedback control that jointly drive the shared channel at an effective load of two to three wireless stations, even when the number of active stations is large. We show that the mitigating influence of TCP extends to unfairness and adverse impact of dynamic rate shifting under multiple access contention. We use experimentation and simulation in a complementary fashion, pointing out performance characteristics where they agree and differ.     

Improving TCP performance in ad hoc networks using signal strength based link management

Mobility in ad hoc networks causes frequent link failures, which in turn causes packet losses. TCP attributes these packet losses to congestion. This incorrect inference results in frequent TCP re-transmission time-outs and therefore a degradation in TCP performance even at light loads. We propose mechanisms that are based on signal strength measurements to alleviate such packet losses due to mobility. Our key ideas are (a) if the signal strength measurements indicate that a link failure is most likely due to a neighbor moving out of range, in reaction, facilitate the use of temporary higher transmission power to keep the link alive and, (b) if the signal strength measurements indicate that a link is likely to fail, initiate a route re-discovery proactively before the link actually fails. We make changes at the MAC and the routing layers to predict link failures and estimate if a link failure is due to mobility. We also propose a simple mechanism at the MAC layer that can help alleviate false link failures, which occur due to congestion when the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is used. We compare the above proactive and reactive schemes and also demonstrate the benefits of using them together and along with our MAC layer extension. We show that, in high mobility, the goodput of a TCP session can be improved by as much as 75% at light loads (when there is only one TCP session in the network) when our methods are incorporated. When the network is heavily loaded (i.e., there are multiple TCP sessions in the network), the proposed schemes can improve the aggregate goodput of the TCP sessions by about 14–30%, on average.     

Transmission control protocol performance enhancement for mobile broadband interactive satellite communication system: a cross‐layer approach

Mobile broadband interactive satellite communication system is of great interest in both academic and industrial communities. However, the conventional strict‐layered protocol stack architecture and the standard TCP version perform poorly over satellite link. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive cross‐layer Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) optimization architecture while considering the main factors that affect the TCP performance. In our proposed architecture, we adopt two TCP split connection performance enhancing proxies to isolate the satellite link from the terrestrial part of the broadband satellite communication system. Then, based on the proposed cross‐layer architecture, we present an analytical model for the TCP throughput by taking the modulation and coding (ModCod) mode and the allocated bandwidth into account. In addition, we put forward a TCP‐driven bandwidth sharing and ModCod mode optimization algorithm to maximize the TCP throughput in satellite link. Extensive simulation results illustrate that our proposed comprehensive cross‐layer TCP optimization approach is able to improve the TCP throughput significantly. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-layer loss differentiation algorithms to improve TCP performance in WLANs

Loss Differentiation Algorithms (LDA) are currently used to determine the cause of packet losses with an aim of improving TCP performance over wireless networks. In this work, we propose a cross-layer solution using two complementary LDA schemes in order to classify the loss origin on an 802.11 link and then to react consequently. The first LDA scheme, acting at the MAC layer, allows differentiating losses due to signal failure caused by displacement or by noise from other loss types. Moreover, in the case of a signal failure, this scheme adapts the behavior of the MAC layer in order to avoid a costly end-to-end TCP resolution. The objective of the second LDA scheme, which acts at the TCP layer, is to distinguish between losses due to interferences and those due to congestions, then accordingly adapt the TCP behavior. We finally demonstrate, through simulation, the efficiency of each LDA scheme as well as the whole cross-layer solution.     

适用于卫星网络的TCP跨层改进机制

该文提出基于跨层信息交互,将链路层ARQ重传状态信息通知TCP的机制,避免了链路层重传引起的时延变化对TCP的不利影响。该机制使用完全可靠选择性重传ARQ为TCP提供可靠的链路,避免卫星链路上发生丢包,并且不必要求链路层保证包按序递交,消除了重排序的等待时延,适合带宽时延积较大的卫星网络。仿真结果表明,能显著提高TCP在卫星网中的性能,特别是在误帧率较高条件下。     

Wireless video streaming with TCP and simultaneous MAC packet transmission (SMPT)

Video streaming is expected to account for a large portion of the traffic in future networks, including wireless networks. It is widely accepted that the user datagram protocol (UDP) is the preferred transport protocol for video streaming and that the transmission control protocol (TCP) is unsuitable for streaming. The widespread use of UDP, however, has a number of drawbacks, such as unfairness and possible congestion collapse, which are avoided by TCP. In this paper we investigate the use of TCP as the transport layer protocol for streaming video in a multi‐code CDMA cellular wireless system. Our approach is to stabilize the TCP throughput over the wireless links by employing a recently developed simultaneous MAC packet transmission (SMPT) approach at the link layer. We study the capacity, i.e. the number of customers per cell, and the quality of service for streaming video in the uplink direction. Our extensive simulations indicate that streaming over TCP in conjunction with SMPT gives good performance for video encoded in a closed loop, i.e. with rate control. We have also found that TCP is unsuitable (even in conjunction with SMPT) for streaming the more variable open‐loop encoded video. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-Layer Enhancement to Support TCP-Based Traffics in WLANs

Widespread deployment of wireless local area networks and a gradual increase in streaming applications have brought about a demand for improved quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks. However, increasing user datagram protocol based high priority multimedia traffic and the class differentiation introduced in QoS protocols, has resulted into transmission control protocol (TCP) starvation and increased spurious timeouts. While today’s Internet traffic is still dominated by TCP based applications, the negative effects of IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed coordination function (EDCF) scheme on TCP performance in the presence of high priority traffic have not been extensively explored. In this paper, the performance of TCP in 802.11e WLAN competing with high priority traffic is examined. The prioritised adaptive enhanced scheme (PAD_EDCF) is proposed. The proposed scheme gives priority to TCP control packets in order to improve the low traffic transmission flow and acquires additional capability of adjusting the MAC parameters based on the traffic load condition. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly improves TCP performances in terms of traffic efficiency, throughput and reduces delay.     

Performance evaluation of TCP extensions on ATM over high bandwidthdelay product networks

Practical experiments in a satellite network environment assist in the design and understanding of future global networks. This article describes the practical experiences gained from TCP/IP on ATM networks over a high-speed satellite link and presents performance comparison studies of such networks with the same host/traffic configurations over local area and wide area networks. These comparison studies on the LAN, WAN, and satellite environments increase our understanding of the behavior of high-bandwidth networks. NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), with its special characteristics and high data rate satellite channels, and the ACTS ATM Internetwork (AAI) were used in these experiments to deliver broadband traffic. Network performance tests were carried out using application-level software (Netspec) on SONET OC-3 (155.52 Mb/s) satellite links. Finally, we experimentally study the performance, efficiency, fairness, and aggressiveness of TCP Reno, TCP New Reno, and TCP SACK end hosts on ATM networks over high BDP networks     

TCP over optical burst-switched networks with controlled burst retransmission

For optical burst-switched (OBS) networks in which TCP is implemented at a higher layer, the loss of bursts can lead to serious degradation of TCP performance. Due to the bufferless nature of OBS, random burst losses may occur, even at low traffic loads. Consequently, these random burst losses may be mistakenly interpreted by the TCP layer as congestion in the network. The TCP sender will then trigger congestion control mechanisms, thereby reducing TCP throughput unnecessarily. In this paper, we introduce a controlled retransmission scheme in which the bursts lost due to contention in the OBS network are retransmitted at the OBS layer. The OBS retransmission scheme can reduce the burst loss probability in the OBS core network. Also, the OBS retransmission scheme can reduce the probability that the TCP layer falsely detects congestion, thereby improving the TCP throughput. We develop an analytical model for evaluating the burst loss probability in an OBS network that uses a retransmission scheme, and we also analyze TCP throughput when the OBS layer implements burst retransmission. We develop a simulation model to validate the analytical results. Simulation and analytical results show that an OBS layer with controlled burst retransmission provides up to two to three orders of magnitude improvement in TCP throughput over an OBS layer without burst retransmission. This significant improvement is primarily because the TCP layer triggers fewer time-outs when the OBS retransmission scheme is used.     

Traffic management for TCP/IP over satellite ATM networks

Several Ka-band satellite systems have been proposed that will use ATM technology to seamlessly transport Internet traffic. The ATM UBR, GFR, and ABR service categories have been designed for data. However, several studies have reported poor TCP performance over satellite ATM networks. We describe techniques to improve TCP performance over satellite ATM networks. We first discuss the various design options available for TCP end systems, IP-ATM edge devices, as well as ATM switches for long-latency connections. We discuss buffer management policies, guaranteed rate services, and the virtual source/virtual destination option in ATM. We present a comparison of ATM service categories for TCP transport over satellite links. The main goal of this article is to discuss design and performance issues for the transport of TCP over UBR, GFR, and ABR services for satellite ATM networks     

A Cross-Layer Approach for WLAN Voice Capacity Planning

This paper presents an analytical approach to determining the maximum number of on/off voice flows that can be supported over a wireless local area network (WLAN), under a quality of service (QoS) constraint the authors consider multiclass distributed coordination function (DCF) based medium access control (MAC) that can provision service differentiation via contention window (CW) differentiation. Each on/off voice flow specifies a stochastic delay bound at the network layer as the QoS requirement. The downlink voice flows are multiplexed at the access point (AP) to alleviate the MAC congestion, where the AP is assigned a smaller CW compared to that of the mobile nodes to guarantee the aggregate downlink throughput. There are six-fold contributions in this paper: 1) a nonsaturated multiclass DCF model is developed; 2) a cross-layer framework is proposed, which integrates the network-layer queueing analysis with the multiclass DCF MAC modeling; 3) the channel busyness ratio control is included in the framework to guarantee the analysis accuracy; 4) the framework is exploited for statistical multiplexing gain analysis, network capacity planning, contention window optimization, and voice traffic rate design; 5) a head-of-line outage dropping (HOD) scheme is integrated with the AP traffic multiplexing to further improve the MAC channel utilization; 6) performance of the proposed cross-layer analysis and the associated applications are validated by extensive computer simulations.     

TCP/IP协议在卫星链路上的应用研究

因特网的发展对带宽的要求越来越高,现有的地面网络远远不能满足用户的需求,因而卫星网与IP网结合成了目前研究的热点。简要介绍了TCP/IP的协议结构和工作原理。针对卫星网的信道差错率高、传播延迟长和信道不对称性对TCP传播性能有恶化影响,按照从链路层到应用层的分类方法,分别提出了改善措施,包括:传输控制协议层的窗口控制、快速重传、快速重发、ACK控制等改进方案以及基于TCP欺骗技术和TCP分段技术的联接分段代理方案。     

Modeling and Analysis of Active Queue Management Schemes under Bursty Traffic

Traffic congestion arising from the shared nature of uplink channels in wireless networks can cause serious problems for the provision of QoS to various services. One approach to overcome these problems is to implement some effective congestion control mechanisms at the downlink buffer at the mobile network link layer or at gateways on the behalf of wireless network access points. Active queue management (AQM) is an effective mechanism to support end-to-end traffic congestion control in modern high-speed networks. Initially developed for Internet routers, AQM is now being also considered as an effective congestion control mechanism to enhance TCP performance over 3G links. This paper proposes an analytical performance model for AQM using various dropping functions. The selection of different dropping functions and threshold values required for this scheme plays a critical role on its effectiveness. The model uses a well-known Markov-modulated Poisson process (MMPP) to capture traffic burstiness and correlations. The validity of the model has been demonstrated through simulation experiments. Extensive analytical results have indicated that exponential dropping function is a good choice for AQM to support efficient congestion control.