TCP Noordwijk for High-Speed Trains

Abstract

In a scenario where people need to travel frequently for their business and leisure, spending a lot of time on high-speed trains, airplanes or ships, it is necessary to provide them a broadband Internet connection while moving. Broadband satellite systems, for their characteristics in terms of coverage and flexibility, can be the best solution for this type of scenarios. Nevertheless, although satellite systems allow a global coverage over the railways, the channel related to a high-speed train is characterized by frequent signal outages due to tunnels, steel covered bridges and powerline trellises. In particular, trellises, always and periodically present along the railroad, cause frequent obstructions of the line of sight, which implies packet loss that significantly affects TCP performance. In fact, standard TCP based on classical congestion control mechanisms is required to perform continuous restart of the algorithm. In this paper, the use of a new TCP protocol called TCP Noordwijk is proposed. It is based on burst transmission concept, which matches optimally with channel characteristics. The advantages with respect to the standard TCP will be shown.