Understanding TCP´s behavior over wireless links

During the last few years, both Internet and mobile systems have grown extremely fast. It is natural that nowadays these two worlds are converging. Adaptation of protocols designed for the wired Internet, such as TCP, to wireless specificity and conversely, design of wireless systems adapted to the Internet protocol stack is an area of wide interest. Many materials can be found in the research community but are often unreachable for the ordinary reader. This paper tries to explain basic TCP functionality and its behaviour over mobile cellular systems. Simulations highlight the spurious effects of the congestion avoidance algorithm of TCP, unwisely triggered by the bad quality of the wireless link. Then a survey and an analysis of the main propositions to improve TCP behaviour over wireless is given, to finally conclude that unfortunately there is no miraculous solution