Interactions between TCP and RLP in wireless Internet

Abstract

The Internet is implemented on the basis of the ISO-OSI hierarchy architecture where the protocols for different layers are independent of each other. For wireless Internet, however, information of other layers may be required in order to improve the overall system performance. We propose a new protocol stack including an interlayer signaling pipe (ISP) across layers for the wireless Internet access scenario. We investigate the interactions of two distinct loss recovery mechanisms employed by TCP and RLP (radio link protocol) during a low-speed TCP connection over a radio channel with correlated losses to show the necessity of the ISP. It is shown by simulations that the proposed ISP can be used to support such a TCP-RLP coordination mechanism.