Performance study of link layer and MAC layer protocols to support TCP in 3G CDMA systems

Providing support for TCP with good quality link connection is a key issue for future wireless networks in which Internet access is going to be one of the most important data services. A number of schemes have been proposed in literature to improve the TCP performance over wireless links. In this paper, we study the performance of a particular combination of link layer protocol (e.g., radio link protocol or RLP) and MAC retransmissions to support the TCP connections over third generation (3G) wireless CDMA networks. We specifically investigate two metrics - the packet error rate and the delay provided by RLP and MAC retransmissions - both of which are important for TCP performance. For independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) error channels, we propose an analytical model for RLP performance with MAC retransmission. The segmentation of TCP/IP packets into smaller RLP frames, as well as the RLP buffering process, is modeled using a Markov chain. For correlated fading channels, we introduce an analytical metric called RLP retransmission efficiency. We show that: 1) the RLP frame size has significant impact on the overall 3G system performance, 2) MAC layer retransmissions significantly improve the TCP performance, and 3) the RLP retransmission scheme performs better in highly correlated channels, while other scheme performs better in low correlated channels. Simulation results also confirm these conclusions.