TCP performance measurements in IEEE 802.11b-based wireless LANs

During the last years, TCP has gained a lot of momentum in the context of wireless networking. However, TCP was designed for wire-line networks and for this reason it interprets difficulties in radio transmission differently. The objective of this paper is to experimentally investigate the performance of TCP in wireless 802.11b LANs under various propagation conditions. We evaluate one-hop networks where an intermediate node is used to establish communication between two distant nodes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the TCP protocol, throughput and efficiency are examined for different transmission rates, packet sizes and transmitted power settings. The measurement results demonstrate the impact of different propagation conditions on the performance of wireless TCP. They also show that wireless networking is robust and efficient in multi-path propagation environment.