Concurrent Multipath Transmission Research Articles

CMT-SCTP and MPTCP Multipath Transport Protocols: A Comprehensive Review

A huge amount of generated data is regularly exploding into the network by the users through smartphones, laptops, tablets, self-configured Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. In such a situation, satisfying critical quality-of-service (QoS) requirements (e.g., throughput, latency, bandwidth, and reliability) is a large challenge as a vast amount of data travels into the network. Nowadays, strict QoS requirements must be satisfied efficiently in many networked multimedia applications when intelligent multi-homed devices are used. Such devices support the concept of multi-homing. To be precise, they have multiple network interfaces that aim to connect and communicate concurrently with different networking technologies. Therefore, many multipath transport protocols are provided to multi-homed devices, which aim (1) to take advantage of several network paths at the transport layer (Layer-4) and (2) to meet the strict QoS requirements for providing low network latency, higher data rates, and increased reliability. To this end, this survey first presents the challenges/problems for supporting multipath transmission with possible solutions. Then, it reviews recent research efforts related to the concurrent multipath transmission (CMT) protocol and the multipath transmission control protocol (MPTCP). It reviews the latest research efforts by considering (1) how a multipath transport protocol operates (i.e., its functionality); (2) in what type of network; (3) what path characteristics it should consider; and (4) how it addresses various design challenges. Furthermore, it presents some lessons learned and discusses open research issues in multipath transport protocols.

Path-Rank-Based Data Chunk Scheduling for Concurrent Multipath Transmission

Abstract The device equipped with a multi-homing feature optimally exploits multiple network interfaces in modern communications networks such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communication using the concurrent multipath transfer (CMT). This enhances system performance by concurrently scheduling data chunks on multiple network paths. For a while, several scheduling criteria have been developed to optimize performance. However, it has been identified that CMT still suffers from many serious problems, such as spurious retransmission, receiver buffer blocking, improper congestion window (CWND) growth, re-ordering and long round trip time, resulting in poor performance. These problems occur due to the asymmetric nature of path characteristics. Thus, this paper introduces a path rank-based CMT (R-CMT) that schedules data chunks according to the rank of the path. The proposed scheduling method calculates the rank of each network path based on the ratio of successfully received and transmitted chunks. The simulation results indicate that the proposed R-CMT scheduling achieves higher performance in terms of network latency, throughput and CWND growth.

Long-term rate control for concurrent multipath real-time video transmission in heterogeneous wireless networks

Concurrent multipath transmission provides an effective solution for streaming high-quality mobile videos in heterogeneous wireless networks. Rate control is commonly adopted in multimedia communication systems to fully utilize the available network bandwidth. This paper proposes a novel rate control for concurrent multipath video transmission. The existing rate control algorithms mainly adapt bit rate in the short-term pattern, i.e., without considering the long-term video transmission quality. We propose a long-term rate control scheme that takes into account the status of both the transmission buffer and video frames. First, a mathematical model is developed to formulate the non-convex problem of long-term quality maximization. Second, we develop a dynamic programming solution for online encoding bit rate control based on buffer status. The performance evaluation is conducted in a real test bed over LTE and Wi-Fi networks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed long-term rate control scheme achieves appreciable improvements over the short-term rate control schemes in terms of video quality and delay performance.

Can Multipath TCP be Robust to Cyber Attacks With Incomplete Information?

Promoted by the advancements in the various wireless access technologies, modern mobile devices equipped with multiple network interfaces are rapidly becoming the norm, and this provides a driving force for the large-scale deployment of the Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) in the current and future Internet. However, the simultaneous use of multiple network paths for concurrent multipath data transmission can make MPTCP have a larger attack surface than the traditional single-path transport protocols, and this may be likely to pose a risk of MPTCP being much more susceptible to cyber attacks. In this paper, we present a measurement method to investigate the vulnerability and robustness of MPTCP under cyber attacks with incomplete network information, by considering the fact that most cyber attacks normally lack of real-time information with respect to various MPTCP attributes. We mathematically characterize cyber attacks with incomplete network information from the viewpoints of both the cyber attacker and the MPTCP communication system, and then we introduce a mixed attack strategy, by jointly considering the features of both the random attacks and the selective attacks, to evaluate the robustness of MPTCP.

Improve MPTCP with SDN: From the perspective of resource pooling

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is proposed by IETF to support concurrent multipath transmission between multihomed hosts. Resource pooling principle, which treats network as a single pooled resource, is applied in the design of MPTCP schemes, and provides guidelines for MPTCP's control to achieve resource utilization and fair resource allocation. However, randomized routing solution and load balancing without global network information in MPTCP have become obstacles to achieve these objectives, which is validated through our measurements. To address above problems, we propose S-MPTCP, which realizes coupling control to MPTCP connections in network based on SDN technology providing global network information. Leveraging collected topology information, a key parameter, expected throughput, is calculated for each subflow ensuring the efficiency and fairness in resource exploration and allocation, and according to it, routing and load balancing modules are improved. Under S-MPTCP's control, subflow's throughput will stabilize around its expected throughput, and meanwhile congestion can be alleviated effectively. Experimental results show that S-MPTCP achieves significant enhancement of bandwidth utilization and fair resource allocation, and the time needed for load balancing is shortened considerably.

Buffer-Driven Rate Control and Packet Distribution for Real-Time Videos in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Video transmission bandwidth can be substantially increased by concurrent transmission through multiple radio interfaces introduced by heterogeneous wireless networks. However, delivering high-quality real-time videos with stringent end-to-end delay constraints is still challenging due to the time-varying multipath channel status. Thus, to integrate available multipath bandwidth and guarantee low end-to-end delay, this paper investigates a real-time concurrent multipath video transmission scheme in heterogeneous access networks. First, we present a multipath buffer analysis model (MBAM) to derive the lower and upper bounds of the target video frame bits. Second, given the low-latency and received video quality smoothness, we propose a buffer-driven rate control and packet distribution (BRCPD) algorithm aided by frame-level rate control and multipath transmission buffer awareness based on MBAM. Finally, we implement the proposed application-layer solution BRCPD algorithm in a real-world testbed. The experiment results verify that different from existing multipath video transmission schemes, the proposed algorithm is able to leverage the MBAM-based frame-level rate control to guarantee the target low end-to-end delay. In particular, the BRCPD algorithm is able to guarantee an overdue loss rate of less than 5% under strictly limited delay constraints (250 ms) in the real-world testbed.

VANETs Multipath Video Data Streaming Considering Road Features

Multipath video streaming in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) is an evolving research topic. The adoption of video transmission in VANETs communication has become essential due to the comprehensiveness and applicability of video data for on-road advertisement and infotainment. Meanwhile, several research studies have considered how to apply and improve the transmission of the video quality. Due to this, the concurrent multipath transmission has been employed in order to achieve load balancing and path diversity, because of the high data rate of the video data. However, the main nature of the road, which is the pathway for VANET nodes has not been considered explicitly. In this paper, the road features are considered for VANETs multipath video streaming based on the greedy geographical routing protocol. Thus, VANETs Multipath Video Streaming based on Road Features (VMVS-RF) protocol has been proposed. The protocol was compared with an ordinary Multipath Video Streaming (MVS). The result demonstrates that the proposed VMVS-RF protocol outperforms the MVS in terms of Data Receiving Rate (DRR), Structural Similarity (SSIM) index and Packet Loss Ratio (PLR).

PTP: Path-specified transport protocol for concurrent multipath transmission in named data networks

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a promising Future Internet architecture to support content distribution. Its inherent addressless routing paradigm brings valuable characteristics to improve the transmission robustness and efficiency, e.g. users are enabled to download content from multiple providers concurrently. However, multipath transmission NDN is different from that in Multipath TCP, i.e. the “paths” in NDN are transparent to and uncontrollable by users. To this end, the user controls the traffic on all transmission paths as an entirety, which leads to a noticeable problem of low bandwidth utilization. In particular, the congestion of a certain path will trigger traffic reduction on other transmission paths that are underutilized. Some solutions have been proposed by letting routers balance loads of different paths to avoid congesting a certain path prematurely. However, the complexity of obtaining an optimal load balancing solution (i.e. solving a Multi-Commodity Flow problem) becomes higher with increasing network size, which limits universal NDN deployments.This paper introduces a compromise solution—Path-specified Transport Protocol (PTP). PTP supports both the label switching and the addressless routing schemes. Specifically, the label switching scheme allows users to precisely control the traffic on each transmission path, and the addressless routing scheme maintains the valuable feature of retrieving content from any provider to guarantee robustness. As the traffic on a transmission path can be explicitly controlled by consumers, load balancing is no longer needed in routers, which reduces the computational burden on routers and consequently increases the system scalability. The experimental results show that PTP significantly increases users’ downloading rates and improves network throughput.

Improving Onboard Internet Services for High-Speed Vehicles by Multipath Transmission in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

With the development of modern high-speed vehicles and mobile communication systems, there is a strong demand for operators to provide stable and high-quality onboard Internet services. However, the vehicle-to-ground links may suffer from several problems, such as insufficient bandwidth and long round-trip time (RTT). Although multiple wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi, third-generation (3G), and fourth-generation (4G), may be available along a track, onboard users do not have good experiences if they can only visit the Internet via one wireless network, which may be subject to coverage gaps and signal attenuation. In this paper, the link qualities of multiple existing 3G and 4G technologies are first measured in a typical high-speed environment. These 3G/4G networks are candidates for vehicle-to-ground communication. Then, a concurrent multipath transmission scheme, together with a network adaptive scheduling algorithm, is proposed. The scheme is independent of the protocol stack; therefore, it is easy to deploy. It also provides transparent Internet services for users, without requiring the participation of the user devices in any multipath signaling. Meanwhile, the scheduling algorithm works at the network layer, instead of the transport layer, to meet the diverse transmission requirements of the connection-oriented and connectionless user applications. The algorithm can effectively aggregate the bandwidth of multiple available wireless links, as well as avoid the reordering of packets based on both the practical tracing databases and the active path monitoring. Analysis and experiments show that the proposed algorithm can provide better onboard Internet services with lower cache requirements than the Earliest Delivery Path First (EDPF) and Weighted Round Robin (WRR) scheduling algorithms, in terms of bandwidth improvement and packet disorder reduction.

CMT-SR: A selective retransmission based concurrent multipath transmission mechanism for conversational video

Conversational video service is characterized by the high bandwidth demand, and the stringent and low delay requirement. High-quality delivery service for conversational video service not only depends on end-to-end bandwidth but also relies on control mechanisms to alleviate the impact of packet loss on video quality. Multipath transmission is considered to be a promising solution to expand end-to-end bandwidth. However, existing multipath transmission schemes are not suitable for conversational video service delivery because they incur either a large number of duplicated packet or a large delay. In this work, retransmission mechanism that satisfies delay requirement is discussed to recover packet loss. The main problem of the retransmission mechanism is the delay. A selective retransmission based concurrent multipath transmission mechanism (CMT-SR) is proposed to optimize the performance of retransmission. Several mechanisms are adopted to retransmit the lost packet in an optimal way. CMT-SR monitors and analyzes the bandwidth and delay of each path, which provides a foundation for estimating arrival time of data packet. Push-based and pull-based mechanisms support sender to be aware of packet loss timely. CMT-SR differentiates between different frames of packet loss. Finally, CMT-SR first retransmits the key parts of the video data over an alternative path considering the decoding deadline, retransmission delay, and characteristic of video streaming. CMT-SR is a reliable multipath transmission scheme for conversational video service and is evaluated by extensive simulations and actual tests. Experimental results show that CMT-SR is an effective way to improve the quality of conversational video service delivery.

Effects of driving behaviour on vehicle cluster formation and its application

Node mobility in a vehicular network is strongly affected by driving behaviour, such as the choice of route. Although various route choice models have been studied in the transportation community, the effects of preferred routes on vehicular networks have not been discussed much in the networking literature. In this work, we set out to understand the effects of different parameters, such as route choice, traffic lights and the locations of road-side units, on the formation of vehicle clusters. We also show how the dynamics of vehicle clusters change over time using real-world vehicle trace data. Furthermore, inspired by the observation that the existence of vehicle clusters provides an opportunity to share Internet bandwidth among neighbouring cars, we propose an architecture that allows a car to utilise the unused Internet links of neighbouring nodes by stripping the data across multiple paths through its neighbours. We design a protocol, called enhancements for transmission control protocol (TCP) on a multi-homed environment (ETOM), to improve the performance of TCP in such an architecture without the need to modify the end points. We evaluate the performance of ETOM by comparing it with the concurrent multi-path transfer stream control transmission protocol (SCTP), and show that it can achieve similar or better performance.

A novel scheduling approach to concurrent multipath transmission of high definition video in overlay networks

Recent advancements in network infrastructures provide increased opportunities to support video delivery over multiple communication paths. However, the high definition (HD) video transmissions still pose crucial challenges due to the high throughput demands and large-size video frames. Motivated by optimizing the delay performance for concurrent multipath transmission of HD video, we propose a novel scheduling approach dubbed FSWG (Frame Splitting based on Weibull distribution and Graph theory) that aims to minimize the end-to-end frame delay while alleviating out-of-order arrivals. First, we analytically construct a delay performance model for HD video streaming in multipath overlay networks based on Weibull distribution and graph theory. Second, we formulate the frame splitting over parallel paths as a constrained optimization problem of minimizing total frame delay and derive its solution based on the water filling algorithm. Third, we design a multipath video transmission system to implement the proposed scheduling approach. The performance evaluation is conducted through extensive simulations in QualNet using H.264 video streaming. Experimental results show that FSWG outperforms the existing schemes in terms of Mean Opinion Score (MOS), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and delay performance metrics.

HMTP: Multipath transport protocol for multihoming wireless erasure networks

AbstractThis paper proposes a fountain‐code‐based multipath transport protocol, called heterogeneous multipath transport protocol (HMTP), and evaluates its performance. HMTP improves the throughput performance and path utilisation of multihoming wireless erasure networks. It solves the receive buffer blocking problem and eliminates the need for retransmissions and in‐order packet delivery, both of which severely degrade the performance of existing multipath transport protocols in multihoming networks. The encoding and decoding algorithms of HMTP are based on efficient and computationally inexpensive coding algorithms such as LT codes. To minimise the fountain encoding/decoding overhead, complexity and computational cost while ensuring the desired decoding performance, the appropriate values of the parameters of the LT codes are determined. We implement and extensively evaluate the performance of HMTP using both NS‐2 simulator and an 802.11 wireless local area network laboratory test bed. Our simulations and experimental results show that HMTP significantly outperforms the concurrent multipath transfer stream control transmission protocol, especially in multihoming 802.11 wireless local area networks. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Simulation-Based Performance Study on Concurrent Multi-Path Transmission over Wireless Broad-Band Network

The previous studies showed that the concurrent multi-path transmission (CMT) schemes can only play their advantage in the narrow-band networks (the most CMT experiments use 2M bandwidth). In this paper, the authors investigate the performance profits of CMT schemes with various network bandwidths. The simulation results show that the CMT schemes can work better in broad-band networks (e.g., over 20M bandwidth) than in narrow-band networks. This also implies that the CMT schemes have the potential to be applied in the field of multimedia transmission.

Concurrent multipath transmission with forward error correction mechanism to overcome burst packet losses for delay-sensitive video streaming in wireless home networks

Wireless multimedia home servers are the next generation of home entertainment systems. The provision of high quality time-critical video streaming applications in indoor environments is very challenging due to high attenuation and interference caused by the walls and the contention in the shared wireless channel. This paper proposes a Delay-sensitive Multipath Forward Error Correction (DM-FEC) mechanism involving an estimation of available bandwidth and a mathematical analytical model with which the appropriate transmission rate, the FEC block length, and the FEC redundancy on each path in a multipath environment can be determined to solve previous problems. The DM-FEC mechanism not only selects the appropriate transmission rate and FEC redundancy on each path but also adaptively adjusts the FEC block length and concurrently sends data over multiple paths to overcome burst packet losses which otherwise can cause the video frame to be unplayable and impede the timely recovery of video information.

Countermeasures to Impacts of Bandwidth and Receiving Buffer on CMT Schemes

Based on the impact investigation of both bandwidth and receiving buffer on concurrent multi-path transmission (CMT) schemes of Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), the authors present an adaptive policy on how to effectively apply CMT- SCTP schemes under various network conditions. Moreover, an optimal fast SACK (FACK) scheme is proposed too in this paper in order to accelerate the feedback of SACKs and further find out varieties of both available bandwidth and loss rate as soon as possible. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme could improve the traffic efficiency of the CMT scheme when receiving buffer is bounded and network bandwidth gets smaller.

Concurrent Multipath Transmission with Forward Error Correction Mechanism for Video Streaming in Wireless Networks

Concurrent multipath transmission has been used in wireless networks in order to improve the performance of end-to-end transmission. However, the lost packets limit video quality. Hence, a Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanism has been proposed to recover lost packets. Previous research didn't select an appropriate transmission rate or FEC redundancy on each path. Hence, congestion packet losses became critical when the available bandwidth wasn't enough on some paths. In order to solve this problem, we propose Concurrent Multipath Transmission with FEC (CMT-FEC) mechanism involving a mathematical analytical model with which the appropriate transmission rate and FEC redundancy on each path in a multipath environment can be determined. Hence, the CMT-FEC mechanism doesn't cause the self-induced congestion effect to impede the timely recovery of video information. The experimental results obtained show that the CMT-FEC mechanism has better performance in terms of effective packet loss rate and peak signal to noise ratio than conventional concurrent multipath FEC mechanisms.

Concurrent multipath transmission combining forward error correction and path interleaving for video streaming

Video streaming is a popular application on next generation networks (NGNs). However, video streaming over NGNs has many challenges due to the high bit error rates of these networks. Forward error correction (FEC) is often applied to improve the quality of video streaming. However, continuous lost packets decrease the recovery performance of FEC protection in NGNs. To disperse continuous lost packets to different FEC blocks, we propose a concurrent multipath transmission that combines FEC with path interleaving. Our proposed control scheme adaptively adjusts the FEC block length and concurrently sends data interleaved over multiple paths. Experimental results with our approach show improved packet loss and signal to noise ratio performance.

Latent Handover: A flow-oriented progressive handover mechanism

The next generation network may be regarded as an IP (Internet Protocol) converged network, combining various access technologies. In this environment, ubiquitous computing and seamless networking are required for the mobile host. The growing availability of multiple network interfaces on mobile devices makes Concurrent Multi-path Transfer (CMT) an appealing candidate to realize the seamless handover. In this paper, we proposed a novel Latent Handover mechanism, which is flow-oriented and switches the traffic to the new path progressively to make the handover process unconscious to users or upper layer applications, especially real-time services. In addition, to support the proposed Latent Handover, the transport layer introduces our proposed cmpSCTP (concurrent multi-path Stream Control Transmission Protocol), which adds concurrent multi-path transfer and dynamic Multi-Path Management support to the standard SCTP for realizing seamless handover. The theoretical analysis verified that the proposed Latent Handover can efficiently optimize the handover process and enhance transmission efficiency during handover. Extensive simulations under different scenarios using OPNET highlighted the superiority of the proposed Latent Handover solution against other existing handover schemes under performance indexes such as throughput, handover latency, packet delay, and packet loss.