TCP/IP over the Bluetooth Wireless Ad-hoc Network

Bluetooth is a wireless ad-hoc network concept that was presented in February 1998 by its five original promoters Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Toshiba and Intel. With Bluetooth, mobile terminals within range of each other can set up ad-hoc connections for both synchronous traffic, e.g. voice, and asynchronous traffic, e.g. IP-based data traffic. In this paper we analyse how well Bluetooth can carry TCP/IP traffic and in particular we show that though the radio channel is very disturbed the TCP Vegas protocol with its flow control mechanism can be carried very well. With ARQ handled at the Bluetooth level, retransmissions are made immediately after a packet error and thus the delays, normally introduced are kept acceptably short. In our model important mechanisms in TCP Vegas as well as Bluetooth mechanisms are modelled in detail and we show that TCP throughput is quite high and delays are kept short for packet error probabilities up to 50% and moderate loads.

[1]  Per Johansson,et al.  Short range radio based ad-hoc networking: performance and properties , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Communications (Cat. No. 99CH36311).

[2]  Jean C. Walrand,et al.  Analysis and comparison of TCP Reno and Vegas , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[3]  T. V. Lakshman,et al.  The performance of TCP/IP for networks with high bandwidth-delay products and random loss , 1997, TNET.

[4]  J.P. Aspas,et al.  TCP/IP over wireless links: performance evaluation , 1998, VTC '98. 48th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference. Pathway to Global Wireless Revolution (Cat. No.98CH36151).

[5]  Lan Wang,et al.  TCP over wireless multi-hop protocols: simulation and experiments , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Communications (Cat. No. 99CH36311).

[6]  Niklas Johansson,et al.  Performance Evaluation of Scheduling Algorithms for Bluetooth , 1999, Broadband Communications.

[7]  Larry L. Peterson,et al.  TCP Vegas: End to End Congestion Avoidance on a Global Internet , 1995, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[8]  Jaap Haartsen,et al.  BLUETOOTH—The universal radio interface for ad hoc, wireless connectivity , 1998 .

[9]  Eitan Altman,et al.  Analysis of TCP Vegas and TCP Reno , 2000, Telecommun. Syst..

[10]  Velio Tralli,et al.  Wireless TCP performance with link layer FEC/ARQ , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Communications (Cat. No. 99CH36311).

[11]  T. V. Lakshman,et al.  On the design of interfaces for TCP/IP over wireless , 1996, Proceedings of MILCOM '96 IEEE Military Communications Conference.

[12]  Reiner Ludwig,et al.  Link layer enhancements for TCP/IP over GSM , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[13]  Rl Davies,et al.  Ad-hoc wireless networking: contention free multiple access , 1995 .

[14]  David B. Johnson,et al.  Routing in Ad Hoc Networks of Mobile Hosts , 1994, 1994 First Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications.

[15]  Charles E. Perkins.  Mobile-IP, ad-hoc networking, and nomadicity , 1996, Proceedings of 20th International Computer Software and Applications Conference: COMPSAC '96.

[16]  W. Richard Stevens,et al.  TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols , 1994 .

[17]  Van Jacobson,et al.  Congestion avoidance and control , 1988, SIGCOMM '88.

[18]  Vern Paxson,et al.  TCP Congestion Control , 1999, RFC.

[19]  Eitan Altman,et al.  Analysis of TCP Vegas and TCP Reno , 1997, Proceedings of ICC'97 - International Conference on Communications.

[20]  Victor C. M. Leung,et al.  Improving end-to-end performance of TCP using link-layer retransmissions over mobile internetworks , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Communications (Cat. No. 99CH36311).