Bluetooth TCP booster
Diego Melpignano, David Siorpaes · 2002
It is well known that the Transmission Control Protocol is tuned for wired links and fixed hosts, where packet losses are mainly caused by congestion in intermediate routers. The scenario that wireless links offer is quite different due to the intrinsic unreliability of the radio medium in terms of bit error rate and outage probability, When TCP runs in such an unpredictable environment, its reactive congestion control mechanisms can be unnecessarily invoked causing performance degradation. The paper describes a possible solution to TCP problems faced when the Bluetooth radio system is used at the link layer. It comes out that even if Bluetooth has an efficient error recovering system, this can badly interfere with the TCP layer and retransmission conflicts can arise. The proposed solution acts at the access point between the Bluetooth driver and the IP layer and can be useful for coping with sudden packet losses caused, for example, by radio interference, abrupt environment changes or handoff procedures.