Efficient Concurrent Multipath Transfer using Network Coding in Wireless Networks

Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT), enabled by Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), is considered as one preferred data-transport mode due to increased available bandwidth. However, CMT performance degrades seriously in terms of data reordering due to path dissimilarity and frequent packet loss from wireless unreliability. Most relevant solutions follow the packet sequence numbers and thereby focus on strict in-order reception and packet-specific retransmission. Passively adapting to the network conditions, those approaches are not general and well enough responding to the dynamicity of wireless environment. By applying Network Coding (NC) to CMT, this paper proposes a progressive end-to-end solution (CMT-NC) to those problems in heterogeneous wireless networks. CMT-NC is capable of avoiding reordering and compensating lost packets. Further, an innovative group-based transmission management mechanism enhances the robustness and reliability of data transfer. Simulation results show how by using CMT-NC significant improvements in comparison to another state-of-the-art solution are obtained.