An Adaptive Stream Allocation Method for Improving SCTP Performance over LEO Satellite Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on modification of the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) for resource limited mobile terminals in LEO satellite networks. SCTP is the next-generation transport protocol and can co-exist with conventional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). SCTP has the core feature of TCP and additional unique features which do not exist in TCP. Especially, the multistreaming feature contributes to improve throughput by solving the head of line (HoL) problem which exists in TCP. Thanks to the multistreaming feature, a sender can split data from application layer into multiple streams. Even if a packet in a certain stream is dropped, other streams can continue to deliver packets. Since wireless link error in LEO satellite networks results in packet losses, this feature is useful for efficient communication in LEO satellite networks. However, both the communicating sender and the receiver have to manage states of multiple streams, and thus it requires additional resources. Since multistreaming can improve throughput only in the presence of errors in wireless links, this feature should be disabled in the absence of packet losses due to errors. In this paper, we propose to adaptively enable or disable multistreaming feature according to bandwidth utilization in a wireless link. Through various simulations, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method.