Improving TCP performance with fast adaptive congestion control during soft vertical handoff

Recently, the research on the interworking between 3G cellular networks and WLANs is actively being constructed. To integrate these two technologies, there are many issues such as the network architecture, mobility management, and security which should be solved. During vertical handoff, some undesirable phenomena may mistakenly trigger TCP congestion control operations and thus degrade TCP performance. In this paper, we propose an approach that can quickly estimate available bandwidth when a mobile node (MN) handoff occurs. A sender updates the adaptive slow-start threshold (ssthresh) and congestion window size (cwnd) to improve TCP performance during soft vertical handoff in hybrid mobile networks. Our scheme requires only minor modifications of the transport layer of the end hosts. Simulation results show that our scheme effectively improves the TCP performance.

[1]  Xuemin Shen,et al.  A Service-Agent-Based Roaming Architecture for WLAN/Cellular Integrated Networks , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[2]  Randy H. Katz,et al.  Vertical handoffs in wireless overlay networks , 1998, Mob. Networks Appl..

[3]  Srinivasan Seshan,et al.  Improving TCP/IP performance over wireless networks , 1995, MobiCom '95.

[4]  Jianping Pan,et al.  Mobility support in hybrid wireless/IP networking , 2003, Comput. Commun..

[5]  V. Jacobson,et al.  Congestion avoidance and control , 1988, CCRV.

[6]  J.A. Guerrero,et al.  Policy-based Network Management Reference Architecture for an Integrated Environment WLAN-3G , 2008, IEEE Latin America Transactions.

[7]  W. Richard Stevens,et al.  TCP Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, Fast Retransmit, and Fast Recovery Algorithms , 1997, RFC.

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

[9]  Jochen Grimminger,et al.  A radio access network for next generation wireless networks based on multi-protocol label switching and hierarchical Mobile IP , 2002, Proceedings IEEE 56th Vehicular Technology Conference.

[10]  Liviu Iftode,et al.  Improving the Performance of Reliable Transport Protocols in Mobile Computing Environments , 1994, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[11]  Claude Castelluccia,et al.  Hierarchical MIPv6 mobility management , 2000 .

[12]  Harsha Sirisena,et al.  Freeze TCP with timestamps for fast packet loss recovery after disconnections , 2003, Comput. Commun..

[13]  Vipul Gupta,et al.  Freeze-TCP: a true end-to-end TCP enhancement mechanism for mobile environments , 2000, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2000. Conference on Computer Communications. Nineteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (Cat. No.00CH37064).

[14]  Liang Liu,et al.  Interworking between WLANs and 3G networks: TCP challenges , 2004, 2004 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8733).

[15]  Jiro Katto,et al.  An efficient TCP with explicit handover notification for mobile networks , 2004, 2004 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8733).

[16]  Hala ElAarag,et al.  Improving TCP performance over mobile networks , 2002, CSUR.

[17]  Ren Wang,et al.  TCP westwood: Bandwidth estimation for enhanced transport over wireless links , 2001, MobiCom '01.