Improving TCP Performance for Wireless Cellular Networks by Adaptive FEC Combined with Explicit Loss Notification

We propose a new adaptive FEC scheme combined with ELN (Explicit Loss Notification) that was proposed for improving TCP performance in wireless cellular networks. In our method, transmission errors on the wireless link are measured at the packet level and the error status is notified the TCP sender with ELN. According to this information, an appropriate FEC code is determined in order to maximize the TCP performance. We first compare the TCP performance using Snoop Protocol, ELN and the fixed FEC, through which we find the appropriate FEC code against given BER (bit error ratio). We then show how the adaptive FEC can be realized using our solution, and also examine the appropriate observation period of measuring BER enough for the fading speed on the noisy wireless link. We finally demonstrate that our method can achieve better performance than the conventional fixed FEC by using the Gilbert model as a wireless error model. Keyword Wireless cellular network, TCP, Throughput, FEC, Gilbert model