TCP-Aware Backpressure Routing and Scheduling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a TCP-aware backpressure routing and scheduling method that enhances TCP flow throughput and fairness in wireless networks without modifying TCP protocols.

Contribution

It proposes a novel TCP-aware backpressure framework that guarantees throughput optimality and fairness while integrating seamlessly with existing TCP protocols.

Findings

Significantly improves TCP flow throughput

Provides fairness among TCP flows

Guarantees throughput optimality

Abstract

In this work, we explore the performance of backpressure routing and scheduling for TCP flows over wireless networks. TCP and backpressure are not compatible due to a mismatch between the congestion control mechanism of TCP and the queue size based routing and scheduling of the backpressure framework. We propose a TCP-aware backpressure routing and scheduling that takes into account the behavior of TCP flows. TCP-aware backpressure (i) provides throughput optimality guarantees in the Lyapunov optimization framework, (ii) gracefully combines TCP and backpressure without making any changes to the TCP protocol, (iii) improves the throughput of TCP flows significantly, and (iv) provides fairness across competing TCP flows.