Decision of Maximum Congestion Window Size for TCP Performance Improvement by Bandwidth and RTT Measurement in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Abstract

In the wireless network, TCP performs poorly because it was originally designed for wired networks and does not take into consideration wireless characteristics such as mobility, high-loss probability, and hidden-terminal problems. In particular, in the wireless multi-hop networks, a large congestion window increases the probability of contention and packet losses, and TCP performance is degraded severely as a result. So, it is necessary to limit the TCP congestion window size in order keep the probability of contention loss in the system to a minimum. In this paper, we propose a new scheme for determining the maximum congestion window size based on the measured bandwidth and Round- Trip-Time (RTT). Using ns-2 simulation, we show that the proposed scheme reduces the probability of packet contention and improves TCP performance.