Previous research on transport layer protocols for wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) has focused on designing protocols
specifically
targeted for sensor
networks. Most sensor networks applications,
however, are only useful when connected to an external network. The
deployment of TCP/IP in WSNs would enable direct connection between the
WSN and external TCP/IP networks. However, TCP performs badly in
wireless environments both in terms of throughput and energy
efficiency. To overcome these problems in WSNs we have designed
Distributed TCP Caching. This mechanism greatly enhances TCP
performance by caching TCP segments on the nodes in the sensor network
and locally retransmitting lost segments. Our simulations demonstrate
that with these enhancements TCP performs well enough to be useful in
wireless sensor networks.