Mobile-end transport protocol: an alternative to TCP/IP over wireless links

Unlike wired links, wireless network bandwidth is highly limited and the channel usually suffers from frequent and bursty loss due to its vulnerability to various kinds of interference. At the same time, the traditional TCP with its congestion control is well known for its poor performance over wireless links. This paper proposes a new protocol that (1) replaces TCP/IP over the wireless link by a simpler protocol with smaller headers, if the link is the last hop along a data path, (2) shifts functions needed to communicate with an Internet host using TCP/IP from the mobile host to the base station, so that the distinct wireless link is hidden from the outside Internet, and (3) exploits link-layer acknowledgments and retransmissions to quickly recover losses over the wireless link. Our simulation results show a substantial performance improvement achieved by the new protocol.