Interference robust TCP

With the exception of the fast retransmit and recovery algorithms, transmission control protocol (TCP) assumes congestion to be the only source of packet loss. When wireless networks experience packet loss due to interference or any other error congestion control algorithms in TCP are triggered. Unnecessary and incorrect usage of congestion control algorithms results in a high performance penalty. We analyze and present results describing the unsuitability of congestion control algorithms in TCP when packets are lost due to interference. We then present Interference Robust TCP (IR-TCP), which is a transport layer protocol that improves the transport layer performance as compared to TCP in the presence of lossy links such as those in wireless networks. IR-TCP is interference aware and uses the interference information from the link layer for its recovery procedure. IR-TCP is backward compatible and does not affect performance during normal operation or congestion, while providing significant performance improvement during interference. We present experimental implementation lR-TCP and the measurement of the performance improvement relative to TCT.