Performance Analysis of TCP and UDP In Wireless LANS

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards have become the primary access method for enterprise and residential network connectivity. The performance characteristics of transport layer protocols operating over wireless links differ substantially from their behavior in wired environments due to shared medium contention, signal attenuation, multipath fading, and MAC layer retransmissions. This paper presents a comparative performance analysis of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in WLAN environments. Through simulation-based experiments using NS-3 across varying node densities, traffic patterns, and WLAN standards from 802.11b through 802.11ax, the study evaluates throughput, end-to-end delay, jitter, and packet loss for both protocols. Results demonstrate that TCP's congestion control mechanisms, while essential for reliability, significantly reduce throughput and increase latency in wireless environments compared to wired networks. UDP maintains higher throughput and lower delay but at the cost of reliability. The paper discusses the implications for application design and protocol selection in wireless deployments.