Strategically Positioning On-Board PEPs in LEO-based NTN for TCP Throughput Improvement

Non-terrestrial network (NTN) is a technology that enables mobile devices such as smartphones to directly communicate with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and access Internet services from anywhere on the globe. Although initial commercial releases offer only limited bandwidth, the technology is expected to rapidly expand its capacity with "mega-constellations." In this paper, we explore novel configuration options of the NTN architecture that will help boost the TCP throughput performance of an NTN user. We first demonstrate that traditional performance-enhancing proxies (PEPs) deployed on only terrestrial gateways do not have an overwhelming merit over end-to-end TCP Hybla. However, we show that an on-board PEP strategically deployed on satellites can achieve superior performance than both TCP Hybla and the PEP on the terrestrial gateway.