A Dynamic Packet Scheduling Method for Multipath TCP in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is considered as a promising protocol that enables multi-homed terminals with multiple interfaces, to transmit data concurrently through all the available paths in heterogeneous wireless networks. However, the dissimilar characteristics among different paths may cause the out-of-order problem at the receiver with limited receiving buffer, which will significantly degrade the overall throughput. Many packet scheduling schemes for MPTCP have been proposed to keep data in-order delivery, but most of them only consider the path latency, ignoring the bandwidth and packet loss rate. In this paper, we propose a new dynamic packet scheduling method for MPTCP. We first use a low-complexity way to estimate the packets sent on other paths concurrently, taking both the bandwidth and packet loss rate into consideration, then modify the scheduling value with the feedback information. Simulation results show that our method can enhance the overall throughput and reduce the unordered packets at the receiver.