A Cross-Layer Design to Achieve Stable and Efficient Parallel TCP over Next Generation Wireless Networks
Chih-Hsin Chang and Tein-Yaw Chung
To access multiple networks for ubiquitous services, next generation wireless network is expected to support mobile devices with multiple interfaces. However, as mobile Internet service prevails, it is imperative for a throughput-driven application, such as Web and FTP, to exploit simultaneously accessibility of network resources through these heterogeneous wireless networks. This study explores a cross-layer approach for an application to enjoy higher network throughput with efficient and stable parallel TCP connections for communication between multi-mode mobile devices. Although many previous works have proposed mechanisms to handle TCP over multiple paths, they mainly focuses on maximizing throughput or fairness for TCP over a Wireless Network or a Long Fat Network, without considering the impact of correlation among communication paths. To cope with these issues, this paper presents a Multiple Path TCP Connection (MPTC) game to have a Nash Bargaining Game framework that maximizes transport throughput while minimizing its maintenance cost. To obtain the stable number of TCP connections, each path (a player of MPTC) estimates its optimal connection number based on an extended fluid model over a virtual path router and correlates them among communication paths. Then, the paths negotiate cooperatively with each other to adjust the number of TCP connections. Finally, we study the effect of various parameters and compare the performance of MPTC with existing parallel TCP schemes. Simulation results show that MPTC can maintain a stable and a low number of TCP connections, while achieving close to optimal transport throughput as compared to existing approaches.
Keywords: Multi-mode communication, multipath, Nash Bargaining Game Framework, Parallel TCP Connections, Path Correlation, Throughput.