An Experimental Implementation of a Cross-Layer Approach for Improving TCP Performance over Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), the performance of the transmission control protocol (TCP) at the secondary user (SU) severely drops due to the mistrigger of congestion control. A long disruption is caused by the transmission of primary user, leading to the mistrigger. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer approach, called a CR-aware scheme that enhances TCP performance at the SU. The scheme is a sender side addition to the standard TCP (i.e., TCP-NewReno), and utilizes an explicit cross-layer signal delivered from a physical (or link) layer and the signal gives an indication of detecting the primary transmission (i.e., transmission of the primary user). We evaluated our scheme by implementing it onto a software radio platform, the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), where many parts of lower layer operations (i.e., operations in a link or physical layer) run as user processes. In our implementation, we ran our CR-aware scheme over IEEE 802.15.4. Furthermore, for the purpose of comparison, we implemented a selective ACK-based local recovery scheme that helps TCP isolate congestive loss from a random loss in a wireless section.