Performance evaluation of TCP under dynamic allocation scheme for down‐link transmission rate in W‐CDMA systems

Abstract

AbstractIMT‐2000 has attracted much attention as the Next Generation Mobile Communication System. IMT‐2000 can provide high‐bit‐rate data communication service, so that a great number of packets conveyed by TCP (transmission control protocol) can be transmitted over a wireless link. W‐CDMA, standardized in 3GPP (which standardizes IMT‐2000), allows dynamically allocating transmission rates to flow over a wireless link in response to a changing FER for each flow, which is thought to be essential for a next generation mobile communication system. Therefore, in this paper, we study the characteristics of the dynamic allocation scheme when TCP flows share a wireless link, and, in particular, we focus on the throughput performance of these TCP flows. First, we use simulations to examine the effectiveness of the dynamically allocating down‐link transmission rate for TCP flows in response to changing the frame error rate (FER). Through the simulation results, we will show how it can improve the total throughput performance of TCP flows. Furthermore, we can obtain an effective way to allocate transmission rates to flows with different FERs in order to achieve high total throughput. Finally, we will deal with a case of multiple flows from a fixed host to a mobile host. In actual networks, this often happens. In this case, we will show that the total throughput of TCP flows degrades less than in the single‐flow case, even when the FER is high. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.