A Cross-Layer Packet Loss Identification Scheme to Improve TCP Veno Performance

In wired-cum-wireless networks, one of the main design challenges for TCP is to accurately distinguish congestion losses from random losses caused due to channel noise and interference. TCP Veno has been widely deployed in wireless networks to address this challenge. TCP Veno has been demonstrated to show better performance than TCP Reno in wired-cum-wireless environments. However, TCP Veno does not take into consideration the effects of channel noise and interference on packet losses, which impacts the accuracy of TCP Veno’s packet loss identification and thereby causes underutilization of bandwidth in lightly-loaded networks. In this paper, we propose TCP Venoplus which contains two refinements to improve the performance of TCP Veno in lightly-loaded networks. The first refinement incorporates a new variable, congestion loss window, into TCP Veno. This new variable will aid TCP Veno in proper utilization of bandwidth in presence of lightly-loaded traffic. The second refinement involves procuring power level of received packet from the MAC layer to aid in better detection of random losses. The simulation results demonstrate that, the two refinements in TCP Venoplus can significantly improve Veno’s throughput with accurate packet loss identification and without compromising fairness.