Performance evaluation of congestion control protocols and loss differentiation algorithms over wireless networks

Abstract

Congestion control protocols for wireless networks must be efficient, TCP-friendly, and robust to random wireless loss. Based on these criteria we have evaluated several different congestion control protocols, such as TCP Westwood, TFRC, MULTFRC, RAP, and IFTP. In wireless network environments, most of these protocols do not work well since wireless losses are counted as congestion losses. Therefore, it is necessary to extend these congestion control protocols with end-to-end Loss Differentiation Algorithms (LDA). We evaluate several existing LDA schemes, including Biaz, mBiaz, Spike, ZigZag, ZBS, PLC, SPLD, and TD, with simulation results showing different drawbacks for each scheme. We thus propose a new LDA scheme: the mSpike scheme. The mSpike scheme classifies the loss type according to the mean and deviation of the relative one-way trip time. The simulation results show that the mSpike scheme has better performance and fewer problems in most of the situations evaluated. We also test the combination of MULTFRC and mSpike under different wireless lossy environments. The simulation results show that they have a high utilization of the available bandwidth. Therefore, this combination would be a good choice for applications with high bandwidth requirements.