Packet losses in mobile ad hoc networks: causes, impacts and proposals

Abstract

It is well known that TCP has been well tuned to provide reliable data transfer in traditional wired network environment. Due to its wide use in the Internet, TCP is also expected for communications within Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) and between MANET and Internet. However, traditional TCP assumes all the packet losses are due to the network congestion. Unfortunately, this assumption is not the case in MANET environment, because many factors other than network congestion could result in the packet losses. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on packet losses in MANET environment. Specifically, we firstly point out that the packet losses mainly result from five factors: lossy wireless channel, unfair access wireless channel, network congestion, node mobility, and malicious packet dropping attack; and give an explanation about how these factors deteriorate the TCP performance. Then we give a broad overview of the existing proposals to reduce the impacts of these factors. Based on the limitations of these proposals, we suggest a set of open problems for future research.