Satellite network simulation for TCP performance analysis

TCP has been a robust and efficient protocol for terrestrial networks for more than a decade now. Unfortunately, it does not fare very well in the space environment because of the long delays, the tremendous bit error rates (BER), and the huge asymmetry in the channels. However, it does provide a wonderful base for extension. TCP Westwood is the one of the working to improve TCP performance over wireless communication. Offering solution of TCP Westwood for performance problems is to compute congestion window and slow start threshold values in respect of grade of congesiton when duplicated ACK occurs. We can easily imagine that this will increase throughput rate. Aim of this thesis is to implement simulation which will compare TCP Westwood with other protocols using Iridium satellite system and analysing results we achieved. We used the Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) that is open source code and used for scientific researching and development. Our simulation is used over Iridium satellite system. Iridium?s constellation consists of 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO), cross-linked satellites and it is the one of the largest commercial satellite constellations in the world Keywords : TCP, TCP Westwood, Satellite Systems, LEO Iridium Satellite System, Network Simulator 2 (NS-2), Satellite Networking