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Procedia Computer Science 00 (2015) 000–000
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Procedia Computer Science 111 (2017) 2–7
8th International Conference on Advances in Information Technology, IAIT2016, 19-22
December 2016, Macau, China
Simulated performance of TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP protocols
over 4G network
Shahrudin Awang Nora,*, Raaid Alubadya,b, Wisam Abduladeem Kamilc
a
a
InterNetWorks Research Laboratory. Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok
b
b
Computer Science Department, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq
cc
Computer Science Department, University of Thi-Qar, Thi-Qar, Iraq
Abstract
Forth Generation (4G) network support for wide geographical locations proves its use as a more advanced wireless technology.
The Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G mobile communications standard set by International Communication Union (ITU),
specifically ITU Radio communication Sector (ITU-R). At the moment, video traffic and telecommunications grow under the
expansion of LTE, which is considered as the actual motivating access technology of 4G network. Throughout the deployment of
LTE, various transport protocols are advised and broadly experimented, for instance, TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP that may
execute differently on 4G networks subject to the network scenarios and parameter settings. Even though the deployment of LTE
is swiftly enhanced, there is a lack of performance evaluation of its protocols. Hence, a widespread scrutiny is required for the
evaluation of the operation of numerous protocols for high-end applications such as multimedia. Adopting these applications with
flexible quality of service constraints with improved usage of resources is a challenging task. In this paper, the output results of
different transport protocols for multimedia streaming applications, e.g., video, through extensive simulations are analyzed. The
performance of an MPEG-4 video streaming is evaluated using NS-3. The performance metrics used are delay, jitter, throughput,
and packet loss. These metrics are evaluated at the base station via TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP protocols over the 4G-LTE
technology. The obtained results show that the DCCP performs the best in throughput improvement with the minimization of
delay and jitter as compared to UDP, TCP, and SCTP.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Information
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Information
Technology.
Technology
Keywords: 4G; LTE; TCP; SCTP; DCCP; UDP; MPEG4; NS-3.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +60192647200
E-mail address:
[email protected]1877-0509 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Information Technology.
1877-0509 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Information
Technology
10.1016/j.procs.2017.06.002
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Shahrudin Awang Nor et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2015) 000–000
1. Introduction
Wireless communication networks are becoming a common service because of its flexibility in access and
utilization for offering high transmission rate every time and everywhere1. These kinds of networks have been
designed from an expensive technology for limited selected individuals of the existing ubiquitous systems, which are
used by a huge number of masses in the world. Wireless technology may be divided into four different generations,
that is, First Generation (1G), which was the analog radio systems; Second Generation (2G), which was the earliest
digital wireless system; Third Generation (3G), which was the foremost wireless system that provides broadband
communication; Fourth Generation (4G) famous for Long-Term Evolution (LTE)2,3.
As a result in the development of wireless communications, the network traffic is being increased, particularly
with the increase in the number of network nodes. LTE delivers higher transmission rate and meets the growing
demands for multimedia transmission4. In the current era of telecommunications, video traffic is growing rapidly
and simultaneously with the advancement of LTE, which is famous for the true fundamental access technology of
4G networks5. During the deployment of LTE, four protocols of the transport layer are the most encouraged and
broadly reviewed, named Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)6, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)7,
Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)8 and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)9. The transmission rate is
considerably motivated by the performance of the transport protocols, which is used in the scenarios of wireless
networking4.
While the implementation of LTE is promptly paced, there is a lack of performance evaluation of its protocols.
Therefore, a broad assessment is indispensable for the performance evaluation of several protocol suits for high end
applications such as multimedia and so on. The challenging behaviors of the three mentioned transport protocols for
the transmission of multimedia applications need emphasizing the positive and negative aspects of their
performances7. The present comparison reports do not reflect the performance of TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP
protocols for the transportation of videos under the LTE access networks. The best transport protocol for the
transmission of video data is even not illustrated due to the conflicted inferences. So, presenting an important
investigation of the performance of the mentioned protocols for the LTE environment may help researchers and
academicians in selecting the accurate protocol for the transmission of video applications.
In this study, the transport layer protocols that are used for video streaming are analyzed. Furthermore, through
simulation results, performed in NS-3, the strength and weaknesses of TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP are presented
that may give the idea of selecting the best protocols for the LTE environment. In addition, this performance
evaluation can also provide base which protocol can be better for which metrics among the four, i.e., end to end
delay, throughput, packet loss, and avarge jitter.
2. Previous works
Currently, a variety of the multimedia applications are using TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP as primitive transport
layer protocols. In the existing available research, various studying works cope with their protocols under different
network environments. However, the current works do not enfold their presentation in the environment of LTE,
despite its essential principle in accelerating video traffic in the current telecommunication. The functioning of these
protocols is a significant portion to be calculated in the assessment of any kind of network environments.
Nor et al., studied the performances of standards and TCP in coexistence with the DCCP over short and long
delay link network. In their study the topology for simulation has six network nodes. While the evaluating results
have four metrics, namely, jitter, delay, throughput, and packet loss. The results in their paper showed that packet
pacing improves the TCP flow if it comes to jitter and bandwidth for long delay links, whereas the performance of
standard TCP flow performs quite good with the paced TCP flow for short delay links. Moreover, they have also
presented that the TCP pacing is merely appropriate for implementing on a network link with long propagation
delay10.
In the simulation results of Hofmann et al.11, the performance testing of UDP and TCP over voice in a static
wireless multi-hop network is investigated through extensive simulations. Measurements are done in a network
containing eight nodes while the IEEE 802.11b standard is used as an interface in a ring topology. The outcome of
packet size, hop count, and collision avoidance mechanisms are studied.
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3. Problem description and objectives
In LTE deployment, four transport layer protocols are the most recommended and widely studied, they are UDP,
TCP, SCTP and DCCP12. Although the LTE deployment is rapidly pace, there is a lack of performance evaluation of
its protocols. Therefore, an extensive analysis is required to evaluate the performance of diffrent protocols for high
end user applications such as multimedia applications. The problematic behavior of the four protocols in multimedia
applications entails highlighting the pros and cons of their performance13.
The best performing protocol in video transferring even does not characterized because of the conflicted
conclusions. This drawback due to several reasons. Firstly, the impression of existing comparison studies14, 15 did
not consider the performance of the TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP protocols in transferring video under LTE access
environment. Secondly, the emphasis is to define which protocol can give better the QoS for MPEG-4 video over
wireless local zone network14.
In this study, the simulation scenario of TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP transport layer protocols in terms of video
transmission in 4G environment is verified by using NS-3 simulator, and analyze the performance of these protocols
in term of jitter, throughput, delay and packet loss to highlight the variety impacts of transport layer protocols
behaviors for video transmission in 4G.
4. Simulation Performance Evaluation
In this study, NS-3.22 is utilized for the implementation of the scenarios and evaluation of the transport protocols,
i.e., TCP, SCTP, DCCP, and UDP for transmitting a video stream in the LTE 4G environment.
4.1. Simulation Parameters
Table 1 shows the summary of the model parameters that is used for the simulation experiment.
Table 1. Parameters values
Parameters Description
Simulation Environment NS-3
Protocol TCP, SCTP, DCCP,UDP
Number of nodes 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 node
Base station 1
Number of packet 1024 byte
Connection channel Point-to-Point
Net device type Long Term Evaluation
Interval 100ms
Mobility model Constant Position Mobility model
Channel data rate 20 Mbps
Simulation time 30.0 second
4.2. Evaluation Metrics
The performance evaluation metrics14, 16, 17, 18 used are:
• Throughput: It is defined as the amount of effective packet delivery over a communication channel.
NumberOf Re ceivedPack ets
Throghput = (1)
LastPacket Send − FirstPacke tSend
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• Number of Packet loss: It is defined as the difference of the total number of packets sent by the sender and the
total number of packets received at the receiver.
PacketLose = PacketsSen d − Packets Re ceived (2)
• End-to-End Delay: It is defined as the interval that packets experience when travelling across several networks
from one node to another.
EndToEndDe lay = Tr − Ts (3)
�� is transmitting time of the specific packet, while �� is the reception time for the packet.
• Average Jitter: It is defined as the difference of latency from packet to packet.
Delay j − Dealy i
AverageJit ter = (4)
N
Delay� is the current packet delay, Delay� is the previous packet delay, and N represents the total number of packets
received during the simulation time.
5. Experimental classification results and analysis
The maximum number of nodes such as 10, 20, 30, 40 50 and 60 is used to examine the effect of different
network nodes with the packet size of 1,000 bytes. Fig. 1 shows the number of nodes impacted for the UDP, TCP,
SCTP, and DCCP concerning the different performance metrics.
The throughput in the network refers to the successful packet delivery over a communication channel. Fig. 1 (a)
proves that DCCP protocol has a reasonable throughput value in the environment of LTE network having 10
network nodes. The scenario here is supposed that all the 10 nodes will be sent the MPEG-4 video files at a same
time interval to the base station node. Moreover, continuity of DCCP protocol in its good throughput in the
environment of the LTE network is shown when the number of nodes is augmented from 10 to 20, 30, 40 50 and 60
nodes. The result confirms the steadiness of this protocol even with an increasing number of video file transmission,
whereas the increase in a number of nodes can change the effect of the protocol.
In addition, as the nodes are increased the throughput of complete network improves. The consistent growth of
the graph shown that the network is capable of handling these density of nodes. To accomplish the highest
performance, there is no bottleneck up to this limit of node numbers. As the number of nodes increase, the
throughput grows too high. The DCCP protocol has a good throughput than UDP, TCP, and SCTP due to its two
schemes used in it. These schemes are the congestion control and flow control.
In case of packets with incomplete success in transmit and receive, packet loss happens at the end and the video
stream becomes intermittent. It means that the download and upload speed can slow down too much and the pause
in the video streaming can happen. Moreover, the poor quality voice or video can be achieved. In addition, the loss
of packets happen in the wireless network environment more than the wire network environment because it shares
the medium among all network nodes. The result is presented in Fig. 1 (b) where the TCP protocol achieved the best
result and the DCCP protocol was found as the worst.
This result is for 10 nodes, which broadcast file video to the server at the same time. There is no such difference
if the number of nodes is increased from 10 to 20, 30, 40 50 and 60, respectively. It is also shown that the number of
packet loss is increased when the nodes also increased. This happened because the base station became the
bottleneck that was affected by the density of nodes in the network topology since all the nodes sent packets at the
same time to only one base station.
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111000–000
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(a) Throughput (b) Packet Loss
(c) Delay (d) Jitter
Fig. 1. The results of comparing between TCP/SCTP/UDP/DCCP protocols.
As shown in Fig. 1 (c), DCCP protocol has the best performance as compared to UDP, TCP, and SCTP due to the
little delay time in comparison with other protocols. The TCP and SCTP protocols need more time from the start for
the connection establishment. Moreover, this connection establishment may affect the number of nodes. Because
when the number of nodes is augmented absolutely the time delay will also be increased. This increase occurs more
in the wireless environment rather than the wired network environment because the data link layer in the wireless
needs acknowledgement (ACK), the RTS/CTS, and layer three (ACK). Likewise, wireless networks environment
use media share different than the wired network environment. The mean delay time for UDP, TCP, SCTP, and
DCCP on all four scenarios shows consistently higher delay due to connection less flow of the data over the network.
TCP protocol experiences the largest delay because of the congestion control scheme of the TCP. The reliability
feature of the TCP uses time so cost of unreliability in UDP and DCCP is measured with respect to time. In addition,
the DCCP outperforms the conventional connection less and connection oriented protocols in case of delay.
Comparative analysis of TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP protocols for 10-50 node scenario shows that the DCCP
protocol performs the best in terms of network delay.
In Fig. 1 (d), the jitter was calculated by varying the number of nodes. Since jitter is directly proportional to delay,
therefore, in the evaluation of UDP, jitter increases with the increase in the number of network nodes. While the
DCCP shows fewer values for jitter that reflect the best results, up to some extent, as compared to the other
protocols. Also, it can be seen that TCP and SCTP jitter less as compared to that of the UDP. The reason behind this
is the TCP and SCTP check the network condition. In case of network congestion, their packet sending rate is quite
minimized and kept monitored until the network condition because better due to which the jitter is comparatively
larger than DCCP.
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6. Conclusion
The transmission of video streams needs more bandwidth and high quality of communication. The main
contribution in terms of the quality of communication is the development of the LTE technology, which helps in the
data throughput increase and the latency decrease. In the LTE environment the transportation layer protocols are the
best players of the latest advancements in the multimedia applications. These advancements inspire the requirement
for the performance evaluation of the famous protocols, i.e. TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP for the MPEG-4 video
data transmission in the LTE environment. TCP, SCTP, DCCP and UDP protocols are studied on different
performance metrics, i.e., delay, packet loss, throughput, and jitter. The simulation shows that DCCP outperforms
other protocols in terms of throughput, jitter, and delay. On the other hands, TCP gives a higher packet delivery rate
and minimum packet loss count due to its connection oriented feature. At the end, for multimedia applications where
the packet loss is difficult to be handled, the developers should opt for TCP, otherwise DCCP is the best choice with
better throughput in MPEG-4 video streaming over the LTE environment.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Universiti Utara Malaysia for supporting this work. This work was supported in part
by a RAGS grant with S/O code of 12730.
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