Adaptive packet transmission scheme to improve video streaming for multi-homed devices

Because of the explosive development of different wireless technologies, mobile users can now access multiple wireless networks simultaneously. In this environment, a multiple path scheduling algorithm can improve the performance of the wireless networks and ensure high quality of video streaming for mobile users. This may not be the case, however, for TCP flows. One key reason is the occurrence of out-of-order packets resulting from different delays in alternative paths. Another is packet loss stemming from the unstable channel status of wireless networks. To better exploit multiple path scheduling for TCP flows, this paper proposes a new scheduling algorithm called Adaptive Packet Transmission Scheme (APTS) for multi-homed devices. Our scheme accurately estimates the available bandwidth of wireless networks using a TCP-Friendly Rate Control for Wireless Networks (TFRC-WN) scheme. APTS also distributes TCP packets to the multiple paths simultaneously according to the estimated available bandwidth. Our scheme effectively reduces the number of out-of-order packets by predicting the receiving sequences. Through simulation results, we prove that our scheme improves the performance of TCP and the video quality of mobile users.