Will TCP work in mmWave 5G Cellular Networks?

Abstract

The vast available spectrum in the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands offers the possibility of multi-Gbps data rates for fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. However, mmWave capacity can be highly intermittent due to the vulnerability of mmWave signals to blockages and delays in directional searching. Such highly variable links present unique challenges for adaptive control mechanisms in transport layer protocols and end-to-end applications. This paper considers the fundamental question of whether TCP - the most widely used transport protocol - will work in mmWave cellular systems. The paper provides a comprehensive simulation study of TCP considering various factors such as the congestion control algorithm, including the recently proposed TCP BBR, edge vs. remote servers, handover and multi- connectivity, TCP packet size and 3GPP-stack parameters. We show that the performance of TCP on mmWave links is highly dependent on different combinations of these parameters, and identify the open challenges in this area.

arXiv comment7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. To be published in the IEEE Communication Magazine

References in corpus (3)

• Mobile Edge Computing: A Survey on Architecture and Computation Offloading
• End-to-End Simulation of 5G mmWave Networks
• Improved Handover Through Dual Connectivity in 5G mmWave Mobile Networks

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