HMTP: Multipath transport protocol for multihoming wireless erasure networks

This paper proposes a fountain-code-based multi-path transport protocol, called heterogeneous multi-path transport protocol (HMTP), and evaluates its performance. HMTP improves the throughput performance and path utilization of multi-homing 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 multi-path transport protocols in multi-homing networks. The encoding and decoding algorithms of HMTP are based on efficient and computationally inexpensive coding algorithms such as Luby transform (LT) codes. To minimize 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 (WLAN) laboratory test-bed. Our simulations and experimental results show that HMTP significantly outperforms the concurrent multi-path transfer – stream control transmission protocol (CMT-SCTP), especially in multi-homing 802.11 WLANs. Index Terms Multi-homing, receiver blocking, fountain codes, wireless erasure channel.