Throughput enhancement of simultaneous multipath communication using modified fast retransmit scheme

The increased availability of communication resource through simultaneous use of multiple network interfaces of mobile and fixed devices has enabled higher bandwidth for streaming applications. The out-of-sequence arrival on such multipath transport configurations remains the major challenge to be overcome before the available potential is maximized. In this paper, we propose Modified Fast Retransmit (MFR) Scheme for the multi-homed stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) that minimizes the impact of possible out-of-sequence (OOS) arrival at the destination. The proposed scheme isolates local and global OOS arrivals and adapts fast retransmission strategy for global OOS arrival, in accordance to the end-to-end communication path characteristics. The essence of higher availability of bandwidth is also signified through the modified congestion control mechanism. The proposed scheme produces large boost in throughput of the streams transported through multiple paths, as compared to other schemes; such as Concurrent Multipath Transmission.