A new scheme to improve TCP over wireless networks

In this paper, an effective ARQ (automatic repeat request) scheme is proposed to improve TCP (transport control protocol) performance over wireless networks. Unlike the conventional scheme specified in IS-99 is to limit the maximum retransmission number for per frame, it limits the maximum retransmission number for per packet and can adaptively allocate retransmission number to frames belonging to the same packet. The link layer packet error rate and transmission delay of two schemes are derived in mathematics to compare these two schemes. The Padhye´s TCP throughput model is used to evaluate the TCP performance with link layer ARQ. Numerical results demonstrate the proposed scheme can achieve much lower packet error rate with shorter delay and higher TCP throughput than the conventional scheme.