A TCP Flow Control Scheme for 3G Mobile Communication Networks

Wireless networks have the feature that the data-rate in a wireless link varies with the signal quality. TCP congestion control cannot handle such data-rate variation in the wireless link and its performance deteriorates. In this paper, we propose a TCP flow control scheme that suits 3G mobile communication systems. The proposed flow control scheme can rapidly respond to data-rate variations by having intermediate nodes provide explicit information about the data-rate in the wireless link. Simulations show that the proposed scheme improves TCP performance substantially in terms of throughput and delay over a wide range of data-rate variation.