Understanding Congestion Control in Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks

Complex interference in static multi-hop wireless mesh networks can adversely affect transport protocol performance. Since TCP does not explicitly account for this, starvation and unfairness can result from the use of TCP over such networks. In this paper, the authors explore mechanisms for achieving fair and efficient congestion control for multi-hop wireless mesh networks. First, the authors design an AIMD-based rate-control protocol called Wireless Control Protocol (WCP) which recognizes that wireless congestion is a neighborhood phenomenon, not a node-local one, and appropriately reacts to such congestion.