Link Layer Correction Techniques and Impact on TCP’s Performance in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

TCP performance degrades when end-to-end connections extend over wireless links which are characterized by high Bit Error Rate and intermittent connectivity. Such degradation is mainly accounted for TCP’s unnecessary congestion control actions while attempting TCP loss recovery. Several independent link loss recovery approaches are proposed by researchers to reduce number of losses visible at TCP. In this paper we first presented a survey of loss mitigation techniques at wireless link layer. Secondly performance evaluation for TCP through Type 0 Automatic Retransmission Request mechanism in erroneous Wireless LAN is presented. In particular, simulations are performed taking into account the wireless errors introduced over IEEE 802.11 link using a well-established 2-State Markov model. TCP performance is evaluated under different settings for maximum link retransmissions allowed for each frame. Simulation results show that, link retransmission improves TCP performance by reducing losses perceived at TCP sender. However, such improvement is often associated with adverse effect on other TCP parameters that may cost a lot in return under extreme network conditions. In this paper an attempt is made to observe impact of link retransmissions on the performance of multiple TCP flows competing with each other. The analysis presented in this paper signifies the scope for maximizing TCP’s throughput at the least possible cost.