Improving throughput and reliability in mobile wireless networks via transport layer bandwidth aggregation ?
Currently, most battlefield mobile communication devices are equipped with multiple wireless interfaces. The main target of the multiple interfaces is to increase the communication reliability between the soldiers in the battlefield and the command center, so that if one of the interfaces fails, the other interfaces can still provide a communication path. In this case each application data stream is limited to use only one communication channel. Due to the limited and variable bandwidth of the wireless channels, as well as their lossy and break-prone nature, the performance of mobile applications can be greatly hurt. In this paper, we present a transport layer solution for aggregating the bandwidth of the available interfaces. Our solution is based on extending Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). Our choice to extend SCTP for bandwidth aggregation was motivated by its inherent support for multi-homing. The extended SCTP, which we refer to as Load Sharing-SCTP (LS-SCTP), is able to aggregate the bandwidth of all the active transmission paths between the communicating endpoints. In addition, LS-SCTP dynamically adds/drops communication paths to the aggregated paths bundle. To ensure that the aggregate connection will not stall due to the high loss rate or continuous failure of individual paths, LS-SCTP includes path monitoring and packet assignment mechanisms that distribute the packets on the paths according to their current condition. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed mechanism in providing throughput and reliability to mobile applications under battlefield conditions.
bandwidth aggregation stream control transmission protocol reliable mobile communication multi-homing