A cross-layer scheme for TCP performance improvement in wireless LANs

The growing importance of wireless networks requires an effort from the research community for the optimization of the transmission protocols, in order to achieve the best performance. This paper presents a novel approach for the performance enhancement of the most commonly used transport protocol (TCP) in a wireless environment. Cross-layer collaboration, achieved through the introduction of an ARQ snoop agent within the protocol stack of a wireless host, creates the possibility for the exploitation of link layer ARQ messages within the TCP acknowledgement scheme, with the aim of enhancement of the level of achievable throughput.