A cross-layer design for TCP end-to-end performance improvement in multi-hop wireless networks

Abstract

This paper presents a cross-layer approach for improving TCP performance in IEEE 802.11 wireless channels. The proposed protocol, designated as TCP-CL, is essentially an extension of the original IEEE 802.11 standard and the TCP protocol. By making slight modifications to the legacy IEEE 802.11 MAC and TCP protocols, TCP-CL provides a significant improvement in the performance of TCP in multi-hop wireless environments. The performance of TCP-CL is compared with that of standard TCP-Reno schemes in terms of the achieved effective throughput. The numerical results reveal that TCP-CL achieves a significant improvement in the TCP transmission performance over multi-hop wireless networks.