Optimal design of forward error correction for fairness maximisation among transmission control protocol flavours over wireless networks

Abstract

A plethora of modifications to transmission control protocol (TCP) have recently been proposed, a major aim being to improve its performance over wireless links. Two schools of thought have emerged: the first investigates changes to the transport-layer protocol, whereas the second explores the potential to enhance the characteristics of lower layers to improve the end-to-end performance of TCP. This study focuses on the latter, and, in contrast to most research in this area, which thus-far has concentrated on a single TCP flavour, examines the case where different TCP flavours are competing over a wireless link. To this end, the authors present and assess a cross-layer solution to adapt the coding rate at the link-layer based on the detected TCP flavour, to maximise fairness among TCP flows. Through both analysis and simulation, the authors show that the proposed scheme considerably improves the fairness among different TCP flavours that compete over a wireless link. Furthermore, the proposed approach has minimal detrimental effect on the aggregate throughput of TCP flows.