Performance improvement in wireless networks using cross-layer ARQ

This paper presents a novel cross-layer approach (LLE-TCP) designed for performance enhancement of TCP over a large variety of wireless networks. LLE-TCP avoids TCP ACK packet transmission over the wireless channel. As a result, the saved time can be utilized by the nodes for data packet delivery. The proposed scheme enhances the protocol stacks of the wireless sender (or a base station) and the receiver with cross-layer ARQ agents which support ACK suppression. ARQ agent suppresses the outgoing ACKs at the receiver side and generates them locally at the sender or base station. The performance evaluation of the proposed approach is performed via simulations as well as IEEE 802.11 testbed experiments for single-hop and infrastructure network scenarios. LLE-TCP demonstrates the performance improvement in the range of 20–100% depending on the transmitted TCP/IP datagram size. Among the factors contributing to performance enhancement are: medium busy time reduction, reduced sensibility to link errors, reduced round trip time (RTT), and improved congestion control. A good level of throughput fairness as well as a fair coexistence with state-of-the-art TCP modifications ensures proper functionality of the proposed approach, while performance advantages extended even on non-LLE-TCP users favor an incremental deployment of the technique in existing networks. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.