Effect of channel errors on TCP throughput over satellite links

Daniel Brodbekier, Felipe Mathias, João Célio Brandão

DOI: 10.14209/sbrt.2004.251

Evento: XXI Simpósio Brasileiro de Telecomunicações (SBrT2004)

Keywords: TCP/IP Satellite Communications Internet Burst Errors

Abstract

Satellite transmission is impaired by large delays and relatively high occurrence of channel errors compared to terrestrial transmission over optical fiber. These problems may impact seriously the throughput achieved in a data transmission using Transport Control Protocol (TCP) since channel errors cause packet losses which imply packet retransmission and lowering data transmission rate. In this paper, we compare the throughput degradation of different versions of TCP due to channel errors in a typical satellite link. Among the TCP versions, particular attention is given to Satellite Transport Protocol (STP) which has been specifically developed for satellite transmission. In addition to random statistically independent errors, we also consider error bursts generated in Viterbi decoders of convolutional codes. The evaluation is carried through simulation using the software packages Matlab and ns-2 [15].

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