Conserving energy in TCP for mobile ad-hoc networks

Abstract

The widespread use of TCP as a transport layer protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks and wireline networks has motivated the need to make its implementation highly power efficient specially with respect to ad hoc radio networks. Over the past years many researchers have developed energy efficient protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks. This thesis deals with the various modifications and fine-tunings in the TCP code which, when applied, help in conserving battery power at nodes by saving on the software overhead at the mobile nodes. The various modifications proposed have been tested with actual experiments done on two laptops with Lucent WaveLan wireless cards. The results obtained from the experiments indicate that with certain modifications made in the implementation of TCP code, significant savings in power can be achieved along with an increase in the overall efficiency of TCP over wireless links. Finally, a discussion of how other modifications can be researched and tested as the hardware for mobile systems change is proposed.