An Integrated Framework for Enabling TCP/IP Communications on SHARP

We present in this proposal an integrated framework for enabling efficient and reliable TCP/IP communications on SHARP, where various mechanisms are proposed to tackle different TCP/IP communication challenges imposed by the dynamic wireless networking environment. TCP Westwood (TCPW) extends the standard TCP for more efficient congestion control and serves as the base for Agile Probing and Bulk Repeat. TCPW with Agile Probing (TCPW-A) achieves better performance under highly dynamic environment, and TCP Bulk Repeat (TCP BR) brings about enhanced TCP/IP communications in heavy error scenarios. Further, TCP Probe extends directly from TCP for the purpose of capacity estimation. Buffering mechanism is inherently included in TCP if the data on SHARP should be buffered locally; on the other hand, we also describe the scenario where surveillance data is sent to some intermediate node (e.g. balloon or UAV). In this case, the intermediate node serves as the TCP endpoint for SHARP, buffers data from possibly multiple sources, and is responsible for reliable data transmission to the ground station. The proposed framework and related TCP/IP enhancement mechanisms provide a valuable toolbox that facilitates optimized TCP/IP communications on SHARP for better usage of surveillance data.BENEFITS: The proposed framework and the various mechanisms provide an innovative and solid solution for enhancing TCP/IP in dynamic wireless networks. Our scheme significantly enhances the understanding and system design for solving TCP/IP performance problems, and achieves integrated, efficient and reliable TCP/IP communications for the military communication needs, including war-time command and control, surveillance and control, and homeland security, etc. The market for military applications is quite large. Other potential commercial applications include border and coast patrol, law enforcement agency, emergency control center, and various civil applications, possibly with huge amount of users. The size of this market is quite large and hard to estimate. In particular, the increasingly popular wireless ad hoc and sensor networks will certainly benefit from our work and they provide great opportunities for commercialization. We expect that the aggregate market size will be similar to or larger than that of military applications.