Hop-by-hop transport for satellite networks

This paper research the transport control scheme for satellite networks. The special characteristics make TCP protocols incapable of providing satisfying service for satellite networks. We analyze the performance of hop-by-hop and end-to-end transport under Bernoulli loss model. Then we propose a novel protocol based on hop-by-hop acknowledgment against the traditional end-to-end TCP for satellite networks, which uses ACK associated with NACK together, allows out-of-sequence packet transmission and has the capability of re-routing in arbitrary node. Both theoretical and simulation results showed that hop-by-hop communication scheme outperforms TCP under highly error prone, multi-hop and long delay conditions.