Improving TCP Performance in Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) Communication

On a connected car, the performance of Internet access will significantly affect the user experience. For electric cars that use vehicle-to-grid (V2G) communication to interact with the Internet during charging, the charge cable quality poses a challenge to the V2G communication. Specifically, the performance of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the transport protocol that most Internet applications use, may suffer due to the high noise and consequent errors that the charge cable presents. Currently, TCP NewReno is the TCP implementation that ISO 15118 standard stipulates for the V2G communication. However, its congestion control algorithm has been designed for the general Internet environment where congestion, not link errors, account for most of packet losses. Indeed, we confirm that the throughput of TCP NewReno rapidly degrades as the error rate increases on the charge cable. Specifically, we show that other TCP variants such as TCP Illinois far exceeds TCP NewReno in both lossy and non-lossy link environments. Finally, we propose how to configure TCP NewReno parameters to make it achieve the throughput comparable to other TCP variants on V2G communication environments, regardless of the link quality presented by the charging cable.