Performance evaluation of TCP and its extensions over lossy links in a small satellite environment

Abstract

Space communication protocol standards-transport protocol (SCPS-TP) is a set of extensions to transmission control protocol (TCP) aimed at improving TCP performance in space communications. It is expected to have an experimental evaluation of the throughput performance of SCPS-TP over lossy communication links in a small satellite environment, especially by comparing it with standard TCP. This paper describes a performance evaluation of TCP and SCPS-TP over lossy links in a simulated small satellite environment using a test-bed. The results show that SCPS-TP is more tolerant of heavy noise and asymmetric channel and shows a much better performance, which make it more favorable over standard TCP in similar communication environments.