2019 2nd International Conference on Communication Engineering and Technology
A TCP Fairness Control Method for Two-Host Concurrent Communications in
Elastic WLAN System Using Raspberry Pi Access-Point
Rahardhita Widyatra Sudibyo, Nobuo Funabiki,
Minoru Kuribayashi, Kwenga Ismael Munene, Md.
Manowarul Islam
Department of Electrical and Communication
Engineering, Okayama University
Okayama, Japan
e-mail: funabiki@okayama-u.ac.jp
Abstract—The IEEE802.11 wireless local-area network (WLAN)
has been extensively deployed as inexpensive and flexible
Internet access services. We have studied the elastic WLAN
system that dynamically optimizes the network configuration
depending on traffic demands. Our testbed experiments using
Raspberry Pi revealed that concurrent TCP communications of
multiple hosts with a single AP cause the unfairness in
throughput performances. In this paper, we propose the TCP
fairness control method for two-host concurrent
communications. The delay is introduced in the AP at the
packet transmissions to the faster host, to increase
transmission opportunities with the slower host. The delay is
initially estimated by the received signal strength (RSS) from
each host, and then, is dynamically optimized using the PI
controller. For evaluations, we implement the proposal in the
elastic WLAN system testbed, and conduct extensive
experiments, where the TCP throughput fairness is achieved.
Keywords wireless local-area network; raspberry Pi; TCP
throughput fairness; delay; PI controller; testbed
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the IEEE802.11 wireless local-area network
(WLAN) has been widely deployed around the world due to
several advantages of simple installations, flexible coverages,
and low costs [1]. WLAN facilitates the wireless access to
the Internet, providing users with a convenient and viable
alternative to the wired Ethernet LAN connectivity. As a
result, WLAN has become the most common access way to
the Internet in governments, companies, and schools.
For the 802.11n WLAN, we have studied the elastic
WLAN system [2] that dynamically optimizes the network
configuration depending on traffic demands, to reduce
energy consumptions while enhancing performances. Also,
we have implemented the elastic WLAN system testbed
using Raspberry Pi for the access-point (AP) [3].
In WLAN, the fairness of the throughput performance
among hosts is important for service providers to ensure fair
services among the users [4]. That is, fairness issues in
WLAN have been studied extensively [5]-[9]. Since the
majority of network applications use TCP, the TCP fairness
appears to be extremely critical in WLAN.
978-1-7281-1439-2/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
Wen-Chung Kao
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Taiwan Normal University
Taipei, Taiwan
e-mail: jungkao@ntnu.edu.tw
However, our preliminary experiments using the elastic
WLAN system testbed revealed that the TCP throughput is
not fair among the two hosts communicating with the same
AP when they are located at difference distances from the
AP and are concurrently communicating. This unfairness can
be caused by both differences in the modulation and coding
scheme (MCS) and the TCP window size among them. As a
result, the packet transmission interval for the faster host
further becomes shorter and that for the slower host turns
into longer.
In this paper, we propose the TCP fairness control
method for two-host concurrent communications in the
elastic WLAN system using Raspberry Pi AP. The delay is
introduced in the AP at the packet transmissions to the faster
host using Linux commands, in order to increase the
transmission opportunities with the slower host. Then, it is
expected that the faster host will reduce the throughput,
while the slower host increases it. This delay is initially
calculate by the received signal strength (RSS) from each
host, and then, is dynamically optimized to achieve the better
fairness using PI controller [10].
For evaluations, we implement the proposal in the testbed,
and verify the effectiveness through extensive experiments in
outdoor and indoor network fields, where the TCP
throughput fairness is achieved.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II
presents the TCP fairness control method. Section III
evaluates the proposal through testbed experiments. Section
IV presents the dynamic delay optimization using the PI
controller. Finally, Section V concludes this paper with
future works.
II. PROPOSAL OF TCP FAIRNESS CONTROL METHOD
In this section, we propose the TCP fairness control
method and its implementation on Raspberry Pi AP.
A. Idea
Our testbed experiments revealed that concurrent TCP
communications of two hosts with a single AP cause
unfairness in throughput performances, because the packet
transmission intervals become much different among them.
Figure 1(a) illustrates the unfairness of the packet
transmitting intervals between the near and far hosts, which
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may be caused by the differences in MCS and the TCP
window size between the links. The near host will use the
faster MCS than the far host, which makes the TCP window
size larger. Then, the near host occupies much more
bandwidth for packet transmissions than the far host, which
results in increasing the interval difference between them.
To solve this unfairness problem, the delay is introduced
at the communication of the near host (fast host). By
reducing the transmission bandwidth of the fast host, it can
give more bandwidth to the far host (slow host). This delay
should be controlled such that the packet transmission
intervals of the two hosts become equal as shown in Figure
1(b), to achieve the throughput fairness.
(a) without proposal.
(b) with proposal.
Figure 1. Background of TCP fairness control method.
In the proposed method, the initial delay is calculated
using the measured RSS at the AP from the two hosts,
because RSS determines the MCS. Then, the delay is
dynamically optimized to achieve the better fairness during
communications, which will be presented in Section V.
B. Initial Delay Calculation
Based upon the experimental results, the initial delay D(0)
in the TCP fairness control method is calculated from the
difference of the measured RSS at the AP between the two
hosts:
   link configuration between the server and the host through
where RSSfast represents the RSS at the AP from the fast host,
RSSslow does the RSS from the slow host, RSSmin does the
constant minimum RSS in WLAN, and a, b are the constant
parameters that should be adjusted in each environment,
respectively. In this paper, RSSmin = -88dBm, a = 9, and b =
0.17 are used. This equation with the parameter values is
derived from our measurement results in the outdoor/indoor
fields.
C. Testbed Implementation
Then, we present the implementation of our proposal on
the elastic WLAN system testbed.
1) RSS Measurement: The Raspberry Pi AP collects the
measured RSS at the AP from each host by the following
command:
 $sudo iw dev wlan0 station dump — egrep
“Station—signal:”.
Here, the AP does not need to have the privilege to the
host. Since the measured RSS tends continuously fluctuating,
we measure RSS by 30 times with one second interval and
use the average for Eq. (1).
2) Transmission Delay Application: Then, the delay will
be applied to the AP by the following procedure:
a. Delete any previously allocated delay at the interface
wlan0:
 $sudo tc qdisc del root dev wlan0.
b. Set the delay, namely delay1 and delay2, for the packet
transmission from the AP to each host:
 $sudo tc qdisc del root dev wlan0.
 $sudo tc qdisc add dev wlan0 root handle 1: prio
bands 3.
 $sudo tc qdisc replace dev wlan0 parent 1:1 netem
delay delay1.
 $sudo tc qdisc replace dev wlan0 parent 1:2 netem
delay delay2.
c. Apply each delay to the packet transmission to the host
specified by the IP address:
 $sudo tc filter add dev wlan0 protocol ip parent 1:
u32 match ip dst 172.24.4.7 flowid 1:1.
 $sudo tc filter add dev wlan0 protocol ip parent 1:
u32 match ip dst 172.24.4.8 flowid 1:2.
Here, the IP address of the host is manually set. The
automatic set will be in future works.
III. EVALUATION OF PROPOSAL WITH MANUAL DELAY
OPTIMIZATION
In this section, we evaluate the proposal through
experiments using the testbed in the outdoor and indoor
fields. Here, to confirm the validity of the delay introduction,
the initial delay is first calculated by Eq. (1) and then, is
optimized manually.
A. Experiment Setup
In experiments, the TCP traffics are generated from two
hosts to the server at the same time to measure throughputs
under concurrent communications. Figure 2 shows the TCP
the AP. The server and the AP are connected with the
100Mbps wired Ethernet, and the AP and the host are
connected with the IEEE 802.11n wireless link. Using iperf
[11], the host generates TCP traffics with the 477KB TCP
window and the 8KB buffer to the server.
Table I shows the device and software specifications
used in experiments. One Raspberry Pi is employed for the
AP operating at 2.4GHz on channel 13, and three laptops are
for the two hosts and the server.
Figure 2. TCP link configuration.
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 TABLE I. DEVICES AND SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONS 2) Throughput Results: Figures 3 and 4 show throughput
software AP
results for the two hosts without and with the proposal
model Raspberry Pi 3
respectively. They confirm that our proposal greatly
CPU Broadcom BCM2837 @1.2Ghz
improves the fairness. Figure 5 compares the total
memory 1GB LPDDR2 900MHz
throughput for each host location between them.
NIC chipset Broadcom BCM43438 Unfortunately, by the proposal, the total throughput
OS Raspbian diminished by 10% to 31% at each location.
software hostapd
server and hosts
model Toshiba Dynabook R731/B
CPU Intel Core i5-2520M @2.5Ghz
memory 4GB DDR3 1333MHz
OS Linux Ubuntu 14
software Iperf 2.0.5

B. Experiments in Outdoor Field

First, we discuss experiment results in the outdoor
network field.
1) Outdoor Field: Asahi Riverbed is selected for the
outdoor field without interfering signals, which is confirmed
by using Homedale [12]. The AP is located with the 135cm
height and the host is with the 70cm height. During
measurements, H1 is located at 0m, 5m, 10m, and 15m
distance from the AP. For each H1 distance, H2 is moved
from 0m to 30m distance with the 5m interval from the AP.
In the end, the throughput measurements have been
conducted in both cases with and without applying the
proposal.
Figure 5. Total throughput result in outdoor field.
3) Fairness Index Results: The Jain’s fairness index F
[13] can be calculated by:
  
where TPslow and TPfast represent the throughput of the slower
host and that of the faster host respectively. Figure 6 shows
the fairness index result. It is noted that the best fairness
index is 1. Without the proposal, the fairness index is often
smaller than 1. However, with the proposal, the result will
become close to 1 in general.

Figure 3. Throughput result without proposal in outdoor field.

Figure 6. Fairness index results in outdoor field.

C. Experiment in Indoor Field

Next, we discuss experiment results in the indoor
network field.
1) Indoor Field: The third floor in Engineering Building
#2 at Okayama University in Figure 7 is used for the indoor
field. This field has a complex structure that consists of
several rooms and walls. The figure demonstrates the
locations of the AP (triangle), the hosts (circles), and the
server (square). The heights of the AP and the host are the
Figure 4. Throughput result with proposal in outdoor field.
same as in the outdoor field.

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Figure 7. Indoor field.
2) Throughput Results: Figures 8 and 9 show throughput
results for the two hosts without and with the proposal
respectively. Figure 10 compares the total throughput for
each host location between them. With the proposal, the total
throughput has decreased by 6% to 61% in each location.
The solution to the tradeoff between the individual
throughput fairness and the total throughput performance
will be in the future works.
Figure 8. Throughput result without proposal in indoor field.
Figure 9. Throughput result with proposal in indoor field.
Figure 10. Total throughput result in indoor field.
3) Fairness Index Results: Figure 11 illustrates the
fairness index result. Without the proposal, the fairness index
turns out smaller than 1, including 0.6. However, with the
proposal, it will grow into 1 nearly. The effectiveness of our
proposal is confirmed in the indoor field.
Figure 11. Fairness index result in indoor field.
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IV. DYNAMIC DELAY OPTIMIZATION BY PI CONTROLLER
In this section, we present the dynamic delay
optimization in the TCP fairness control method.
A. Delay Optimization by PI Controller
The initial delay D(0) is dynamically optimized by
applying the PI controller [13] to make the measured fairness
index be equal to the given target fairness index:

where D(n) and F(n) represent the delay and the fairness
index at the n-th time step during communications, Ftar does
the given target fairness index, KP does the P control gain,
and KI does the I control gain, respectively. In this paper, Ftar
= 0.97, KP = 3, and KI = 0.8 are adopted. In the
implementation, this equation is modified by:

B. Testbed Implementation
The implementation of the dynamic delay optimization is
discussed. First, to assign the initial delay for the packet
transmission to the fast host at the AP, the following
procedure is implemented on the server:
1) Collect the MAC and IP addresses of the associated
hosts.
2) Request the AP to collect RSS from each host with
1sec interval for 30sec and to send them to the server.
3) Calculate the average of the received RSS.
4) Calculate the initial delay D(0) from the average RSS
by Eq. (1).
5) Set D(0) as the delay to the fast host at the AP.
Then, to dynamically optimize the delay, the following
procedure is implemented on the server, where it is repeated
at every 20sec:
1) Measure the throughput of each host for 20sec using
iperf.
2) Calculate F(n) by Eq. (2).
3) Update D(n) by Eq. (4).
4) Set D(n) as the delay to the fast host at the AP.
C. Result
Figure 12. Testbed topology.
Figure 13 compares the observed fairness indices in the
experiments in the network field in Figure 12 among the
three methods: 1) proposal, 2) initial delay only, and 3) no
delay. During the first 60sec, the system collected the
necessary data to calculate the throughput. Then, it found
that the fairness index between the two hosts is about 0.7.
After that, 1) proposal achieves the target fairness index at
about 130sec. On the other hand, 2) initial delay only and 3)
no delay could not achieve it. Thus, the effectiveness of the
dynamic delay optimization is confirmed.
Figure 13. Observed TCP fairness index.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed the TCP fairness control
method for two-host concurrent communications in the
elastic WLAN system using Raspberry Pi AP. In future
works, we will implement the automatic function of setting
the host IP addresses, extend the proposal to concurrent
communications of three or more hosts, and conduct
experiments in various network fields and topologies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI
(16K00127).
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