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This chapter is from the book

Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: Architectures and ProtocolsAd Hoc Wireless Networks: Architectures and Protocols

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This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: Architectures and ProtocolsAd Hoc Wireless Networks: Architectures and Protocols

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9.6 OTHER TRANSPORT LAYER PROTOCOLS FOR AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS

The performance of a transport layer protocol can be enhanced if it takes into account the nature of the network environment in which it is applied. Especially in wireless environments, it is important to consider the properties of the physical layer and the interaction of the transport layer with the lower layers. This section discusses some of the transport layer protocols that were designed specifically for ad hoc wireless networks. Even though interworking with TCP is very important, there exist several application scenarios such as military communication where a radically new transport layer protocol can be used.

9.6.1 Application Controlled Transport Protocol

Unlike the TCP solutions discussed earlier in this chapter, application controlled transport protocol (ACTP [5] ) [14] is a light-weight transport layer protocol. It is not an extension to TCP. ACTP assigns the responsibility of ensuring reliability to the application layer. It is more like UDP with feedback of delivery and state maintenance. ACTP stands in between TCP and UDP where TCP experiences low performance with high reliability and UDP provides better performance with high packet loss in ad hoc wireless networks.

The key design philosophy of ACTP is to leave the provisioning of reliability to the application layer and provide a simple feedback information about the delivery status of packets to the application layer. ACTP supports the priority of packets to be delivered, but it is the responsibility of the lower layers to actually provide a differentiated service based on this priority.

Figure 9.10 shows the ACTP layer and the API functions used by the application layer to interact with the ACTP layer. Each API function call to send a packet [SendTo()] contains the additional information required for ACTP such as the maximum delay the packet can tolerate (delay), the message number of the packet, and the priority of the packet. The message number is assigned by the application layer, and it need not to be in sequence. The priority level is assigned for every packet by the application. It can be varied across packets in the same flow with increasing numbers referring to higher priority packets. The non-zero value in the message number field implicitly conveys that the application layer expects a delivery status information about the packet to be sent. This delivery status is maintained at the ACTP layer, and is available to the application layer for verification through another API function IsACKed<message number>. The delivery status returned by IsACKed<message number> function call can reflect (i) a successful delivery of the packet (ACK received), (b) a possible loss of the packet (no ACK received and the deadline has expired), (iii) remaining time for the packet (no ACK received but the deadline has not expired), and (iv) no state information exists at the ACTP layer regarding the message under consideration. A zero in the delay field refers to the highest priority packet, which requires immediate transmission with minimum possible delay. Any other value in the delay field refers to the delay that the message can experience. On getting the information about the delivery status, the application layer can decide on retransmission of a packet with the same old priority or with an updated priority. Well after the packet's lifetime expires, ACTP clears the packet's state information and delivery status. The packet's lifetime is calculated as 4xretransmit timeout (RTO) and is set as the lifetime when the packet is sent to the network layer. A node estimates the RTO interval by using the round-trip time between the transmission time of a message and the time of reception of the corresponding ACK. Hence, the RTO value may not be available if there are no existing reliable connections to a destination. A packet without any message number (i.e., no delivery status required) is handled exactly the same way as in UDP without maintaining any state information.

09fig10.gifFigure 9.10 An illustration of the interface functions used in ACTP.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One of the most important advantages of ACTP is that it provides the freedom of choosing the required reliability level to the application layer. Since ACTP is a light-weight transport layer protocol, it is scalable for large networks. Throughput is not affected by path breaks as much as in TCP as there is no congestion window for manipulation as part of the path break recovery. One disadvantage of ACTP is that it is not compatible with TCP. Use of ACTP in a very large ad hoc wireless network can lead to heavy congestion in the network as it does not have any congestion control mechanism.

9.6.2 Ad Hoc Transport Protocol

Ad hoc transport protocol (ATP) [15] is specifically designed for ad hoc wireless networks and is not a variant of TCP. The major aspects by which ATP defers from TCP are (i) coordination among multiple layers, (ii) rate based transmissions, (iii) decoupling congestion control and reliability, and (iv) assisted congestion control. Similar to other TCP variants proposed for ad hoc wireless networks, ATP uses services from network and MAC layers for improving its performance. ATP uses information from lower layers for (i) estimation of the initial transmission rate, (ii) detection, avoidance, and control of congestion, and (iii) detection of path breaks.

Unlike TCP, ATP utilizes a timer-based transmission, where the transmission rate is decided by the granularity of the timer which is dependent on the congestion in the network. The congestion control mechanism is decoupled from the reliability and flow control mechanisms. The network congestion information is obtained from the intermediate nodes, whereas the flow control and reliability information are obtained from the ATP receiver. The intermediate nodes attach the congestion information to every ATP packet and the ATP receiver collates it before including it in the next ACK packet. The congestion information is expressed in terms of the weighted averaged [6] queuing delay (DQ) and contention delay (Dc) experienced by the packets at every intermediate node. The field in which this delay information is included is referred to as the rate feedback field and the transmission rate is the inverse of the delay information contained in the rate feedback field. Intermediate nodes attach the current delay information to every ATP data packet if the already existing value is smaller than the current delay. The ATP receiver collects this delay information and the weighted average value is attached in the periodic ACK (ATP uses SACK mechanism, hence ACK refers to SACK) packet sent back to the ATP sender. During a connection startup process or when ATP recovers from a path break, the transmission rate to be used is determined by a process called quick start. During the quick start process, the ATP sender propagates a probe packet to which the intermediate nodes attach the transmission rate (in the form of current delay), which is received by the ATP receiver, and an ACK is sent back to the ATP sender. The ATP sender starts using the newly obtained transmission rate by setting the data transmission timers. During a connection startup, the connection request and the ACK packets are used as probe packets in order to reduce control overhead. When there is no traffic around an intermediate node, the transmission delay is approximated as β x (DQ + Dc), where β is the factor that considers the induced traffic load. This is to consider the induced load (load on a particular link due to potential contention introduced by the upstream and downstream nodes in the path) when the actual transmission begins. A default value of 3 is used for β. ATP uses SACK packets periodically to ensure the selective retransmission of lost packets, which ensures the reliability of packet delivery. The SACK period is chosen such that it is more than the round-trip time and can track the network dynamics. The receiver performs a weighted average of the delay/transmission rate information for every incoming packet to obtain the transmission rate for an ATP flow and this value is included in the subsequent SACK packet it sends. In addition to the rate feedback, the ATP receiver includes flow control information in the SACK packets.

Unlike TCP, which employs either a decrease of the congestion window or an increase of the congestion window after a congestion, ATP has three phases, namely, increase, decrease, and maintain. If the new transmission rate (R) fed back from the network is beyond a threshold (γ) greater than the current transmission rate (S) [i.e., R > S(1+γ)], then the current transmission rate is increased by a fraction (k) of the difference between the two transmission rates (09inl02.gif). The fraction and threshold are taken to avoid rapid fluctuations in the transmission rate and induced load. The current transmission rate is updated to the new transmission rate if the new transmission rate is lower than the current transmission rate. In the maintain phase, if the new transmission rate is higher than the current transmission rate, but less than the above mentioned threshold, then the current transmission rate is maintained without any change.

If an ATP sender has not received any ACK packets for two consecutive feedback periods, it undergoes a multiplicative decrease of the transmission rate. After a third such period without any ACK, the connection is assumed to be lost and the ATP sender goes to the connection initiation phase during which it periodically generates probe packets. When a path break occurs, the network layer detects it and originates an ELFN packet toward the ATP sender. The ATP sender freezes the sender state and goes to the connection initiation phase. In this phase also, the ATP sender periodically originates probe packets to know the status of the path. With a successful probe, the sender begins data transmission again.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The major advantages of ATP include improved performance, decoupling of the congestion control and reliability mechanisms, and avoidance of congestion window fluctuations. ATP does not maintain any per flow state at the intermediate nodes. The congestion information is gathered directly from the nodes that experience it.

The major disadvantage of ATP is the lack of interoperability with TCP. As TCP is a widely used transport layer protocol, interoperability with TCP servers and clients in the Internet is important in many applications. For large ad hoc wireless networks, the fine-grained per-flow timer used at the ATP sender may become a scalability bottleneck in resource-constrained mobile nodes.

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