An Analytical Model of TCP Flow in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

The performance of TCP over multi-hop wireless networks has been studied in extensive simulation experiments in the past decade, but few theoretical models have yet been introduced to capture the TCP behaviour over contention based MAC protocols, like IEEE 802.11. In this paper, a mathematical model is presented for a single TCP flow over a multi-hop wireless network with arbitrary number of hops, denoted by H in this paper. A stochastic modelling technique is used to formulate the performance of the TCP flow, based on its interaction with the underlying wireless medium. This model is derived for linear topology with static nodes. A statistical formula for the ratio of concurrent transmissions to the total is also introduced for a TCP flow over H wireless hops. The proposed mathematical model has been validated with simulation results indicating that the average deviation is less than 5%.