A Cross-layer Dual Queue Approach for Improving TCP Fairness in Infrastructure WLANs

Authors:
Juho Ha;Eun-Chan Park;Kyung-Joon Park;Chong-Ho Choi
Affiliations:
LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea;Department of Communication and Information, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea;Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, USA;Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Venue:
Wireless Personal Communications: An International Journal
Year:
2009

Citing 4
Cited 1

Modeling TCP throughput: a simple model and its empirical validation

Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM '98 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication
Study of the TCP upstream/downstream unfairness issue with per-flow queuing over infrastructure-mode WLANs: Research Articles

Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing - Radio Link and Transport Protocol Engineering for Future-Generation Wireless Mobile Data Networks
MAC Protocol for Fair Two-Way Communications in Wireless LANs

ICPPW '05 Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops
Achieving Weighted Fairness between Uplink and Downlink in IEEE 802.11 DCF-Based WLANs

Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks

Adaptive Rate Optimal Design for Wireless Heterogeneous Networks: Jointly Congestion Discrimination and Queue Updating

Wireless Personal Communications: An International Journal

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Fairness is one of the most important performance measures in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), where channel is accessed through competition. In this paper, we focus on the fairness problem between TCP uplink and downlink flows in infrastructure WLANs from the cross-layer perspective. First, we show that there exists a notable discrepancy between throughput of uplink flow and that of downlink flow, and discuss its root cause from the standpoint of different responses to TCP data packet drop and TCP ACK packet drop at the access point (AP) buffer. In order to mitigate this unfairness, we propose a dual queue scheme, which works in a cross-layer manner. It employs two separate queues at the AP, one for the data packets of downlink TCP flows and another for the ACK packets of uplink TCP flows, and selects these queues with appropriate probabilities so that TCP per-flow fairness is improved. Moreover, we analyze the behavior of the dual queue scheme and derive throughputs of uplink and downlink flows. Based on this analysis, we obtain the optimal queue selection probabilities for fairness. Extensive simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme is effective and useful in resolving the TCP unfairness problem without deteriorating overall utilization.