Buffer management for TCP over HS-DSCH

In this paper we investigate the influence of buffer management for TCP on performance of the High Speed Downlink Channel (HS-DSCH) introduced in WCDMA release 5. HS-DSCH is a shared channel, but user data is buffered individually prior to the wireless link. Three queue management principles, e.g., passive queuing, the Packet Discard Prevention Counter (PDPC) method and the Random Early Detection (RED) algorithm were evaluated for a number of buffer sizes and scenarios. Also, a buffer large enough to prevent packets from being lost was included for reference. For round robin (RR) scheduling of radio-blocks, PDPC and the passive approach, that both manage to keep the buffer short, gave the best system goodput as well as the shortest average transfer times together with the excessively large buffer. With signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) scheduling, the strategy to avoid all packet losses, resulted in a lower system goodput than for the short buffers. As illustrated in this article, peak transfer rates may not be achieved with very small buffers, but buffers of 10-15 IP packets seem to represent a good trade-off between transfer rates, delay and system goodput. We would like to investigate how to make use of system parameters such as the current amount of data offered for HS-DSCH in total to regulate individual buffer sizes.Godkänd; 2005; 20071026 (saral