Towards Resilient and Efficient Multi-RAT Operation through Network Coding

The usage of network devices equipped with multiple radio access technologies is a promising way to achieve high throughput, low latency, and resilient wireless communication. However, classical scheduling approaches cannot realize the full potential because packet loss on one radio interface can result in resources on the other interfaces to remain unused. This is particularly a problem in situations with asymmetric link data and loss rates. We show that the performance of a multi-RAT system can be significantly improved by the application of intra-flow network coding where the loss of a single or multiple coded packets on one interface does not result in blockage and hence unused radio resources on some other interface. Moreover, it is less sensitive to transmission failures on the backward direction used by automatic repeat request (ARQ). Results from simulations reveal that our approach is able to outperform a classical approach in terms of throughput by factor of up-to 4.4× in certain scenarios.