Impact of WiMAX Network Asymmetry on TCP

The IEEE 802.16 is the standard for broadband wireless access. One promise of this technology (also called WiMAX) is to provide high-speed access to the Internet where the transmission control protocol (TCP) is the core transport protocol. In this paper, we study the impact of network asymmetry in WiMAX on TCP performance. In particular, we investigate the dependence of the aggregate throughput and goodput of TCP on factors such as frame duration, direction of flow, DL:UL ratio, modulation and coding schemes, and offered loads. We find that these factors affect TCP performance by exacerbating the network asymmetry inherent to the MAC layer.