Multipath Routing and MPTCP-Based Data Delivery Over Manets

In some special circumstances (e.g., tsunamis, battlefields, and earthquakes), communication infrastructures are damaged or nonexistent. For communication among people, mobile smart devices (MSDs) can be used to construct mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). This paper focuses on the problem of data delivery in MANETs aiming to improve the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) users receive. MANETs, however, have the well-known problems of frequent disconnections and high rates of failed transmissions as MSDs move in and out of network coverage areas, and the topology constantly changes. To solve these issues, the main contributions of this work are as follows: (1) we provide and investigate the QoE-driven multipath TCP (MPTCP)-based data delivery model in MANETs; (2) we present hidden Markov model-based optimal-start multipath routing, which can effectively predict a mobile node's near future network connection state according to its past connection state; (3) we leverage MPTCP to simultaneously transmit data via multiple interfaces of MSDs and improve the establishment method for MPTCP subpaths; and (4) we study and improve the algorithm of multihop routing in MANETs. The test results show that our algorithms can offer more efficient use of multiple subpaths and better network traffic load balancing than using standard MPTCP alone.