Congestion control in multi-hop wireless networks

This paper focuses on the congestion control problem in a static, multihop, wireless network. Conventional congestion control algorithm, such as TCP, suffers from the performance degradation in multihop wireless networks, due to the characteristics of the shared wireless media. Lack of precise congestion indication and coordination among nodes that compete for the share wireless channel, TCP fails to allocate resource efficiently and fairly among flows. In this paper, we present a novel Explicit Wireless Congestion Control Protocol (EWCCP) for stationary multihop wireless networks. By exploiting explicit coordination and multi-bit explicit feedback from routers, EWCCP gains fine-grain control and is robust to the dvnamics of the wireless channel. EWCCP stabilizes at a lower but more optimal sending window regarding to TCP, and achieves low buffer occupation and low delay. With explicit coordination, EWCCP allocates resource fairly among flows that compete for the shared channel. With an analytical model, we show that EWCCP achieves proportional fairness in multi-hop wireless networks. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of EWCCP. It is shown that EWCCP is a viable congestion control scheme for multi-hop wireless networks.