MAITE: a scheme for improving the performance of TCP over wireless channels

Abstract

Because of the channel's characteristics the use of TCP over wireless may result in poor performance. Significant throughput degradation occurs when TCP interprets high bit error rate and mobile host disconnections as congestion in the network. We address this problem and focus our research on the study of how to improve the TCP's performance over wireless. We study TCP communications between mobile hosts communicating with each other using an infrastructure network. We introduce a new scheme, called MAITE(Mobility Awareness Incorporated as TCP Enhancement) that consists of an implementation of link layer messages that inform the TCP of high BER and disconnection conditions. By the use of simulations we compare the results obtained with MAITE with other previously proposed schemes. Our scheme provides us with improvements in transfer time of 30% over other schemes.