Work

M2HO: Mitigating the Adverse Effects of 5G Handovers on TCP

Year: 2024

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: The advent of 5G promises high bandwidth with the introduction of mmWave technology recently, paving the way for throughput-sensitive applications. However, our measurements in commercial 5G networks show that frequent handovers in 5G, due to physical limitations of mmWave cells, introduce significant under-utilization of the available bandwidth. By analyzing 5G link-layer and TCP traces, we uncover that improper interactions between these two layers causes multiple inefficiencies during handovers. To mitigate these, we propose M2HO, a novel device-centric solution that can predict and recognize different stages of a handover and perform state-dependent mitigation to markedly improve throughput. M2HO is transparent to the firmware, base stations, servers, and applications. We implement M2HO and our extensive evaluations validate that it yields significant improvements in TCP throughput with frequent handovers.

Source: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking

DOI: 10.1145/3636534.3690680

Authors: Zhutian Liu, Qing Deng, Zhaowei Tan, Zhiyun Qian, Xinyu Zhang, Ananthram Swami, Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy

Institutions: University of California, Riverside, University of California San Diego, DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory

Language: English

Topic: Network Traffic and Congestion Control

Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

OpenAlex ID: W4405014076

FWCI: 2.216

Cites: 44

Cited by: 5

Related to: 10