Network coding and MPTCP in satellite networks

Satellite networks are expected to support multimedia traffic flows, offering high capacity with QoS guarantees. This paper deals with Multipath-TCP (MPTCP), which exploits multiple TCP connections using different paths in order to improve user's throughput. In this study, MPTCP is combined with network coding to protect TCP transmissions from packet losses caused by ON/OFF channels in mobile satellite systems. A novel scheme, named Path-Based Network Coding for MPTCP (PBNC-MPTCP), has been proposed that applies Pseudo Random Network Coding (PRNC) to sub-flows, where the encoded packets of a block are sent on different paths in order to exploit path diversity. We have evaluated the PBNCMPTCP performance by means of Ns-2 simulations, showing that PBNC-MPTCP outperforms other schemes in the literature that combine MPTCP with network coding.