A Study of TCP Performance with Snoop Protocol over Fading Wireless Links

In this paper, we have analyzed TCP performance over wireless correlated fading links with and without Snoop protocol. For a given value of the packet error rate, TCP performance without Snoop protocol is degraded as the fading is getting fast (i.e. the user moves fast). When Snoop protocol is introduced in the base station, TCP performance is enhanced in most wireless environments. Especially the performance enhancement derived from using Snoop protocol is large in fast fading channel. This is because packet errors become random and sporadic in fast fading channel and these random packet errors (mostly single packet errors) can be compensated efficiently by Snoop protocol's local packet retransmissions. But Snoop protocol can't give a large performance improvement in slow fading environments where long bursts of packet errors occur. Concerning to packet error rate, Snoop protocol results in the highest performance enhancement in the channel with mid-high values of packet error rate. This means Snoop protocol cannot fully fulfill its ability under too low or too high packet error rate environments.