• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
• /
• v.34 no.6
• /
• pp.435-445
• /
• 2007

Snoop protocol is one of the efficient schemes to compensate TCP packet loss and enhance TCP throughput in wired-cum-wireless networks. However, Snoop protocol has a problem: it cannot perform local retransmission efficiently under the bursty-error prone wireless link. To solve this problem, SACK-Aware-Snoop and SNACK mechanism have been proposed. These approaches improve the performance by using SACK option field between base station and mobile host. However in the wireless channel with high packet loss rate, SACK-Aware-Snoop and SNACK mechanism do not work well because of two reason: (a) end-to-end performance is degraded because duplicate ACKs themself can be lost in the presence of bursty error, (b) energy of mobile device and bandwidth utilization in the wireless link are wasted unnecessarily because of SACK option field in the wireless link. In this paper, we propose a new local retransmission scheme based on Cross-layer approach, called Cross-layer Snoop(C-Snoop) protocol, to solve the limitation of previous localized link layer schemes. C-Snoop protocol includes caching lost TCP data and performing local retransmission based on a few policies dealing with MAC-layer's timeout and local retransmission timeout. From the simulation result, we could see more improved TCP throughput and energy efficiency than previous mechanisms.