Ant Colony Optimization Based Cross-Layer Bandwidth Aggregation Scheme for Efficient Data Delivery in Multi-Homed Wireless Networks

Extension for the multi-homing feature of Stream Control Transport Protocol (SCTP), Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT) can achieve bandwidth aggregation by making use of parallel transmisson over selected paths. However, if CMT-based path selection depended solely upon the information provided by transport layer, it cannot really make the desired bandwidth aggregation. Motivated by the urgent needs of cross-layer bandwidth aggregation and the advances of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) in network selection, this paper proposes a novel ACO based cross-layer bandwidth aggregation scheme for efficient Concurrent Multipath data Transfer (CMT-ACO) in wireless transmission. CMT-ACO provides an efficient data delivery with two modules, which are ACO-based Efficiency Aware model (ACO-EA) that devotes to sense paths´ transmission efficiency(supported by a cross-layer factor) and reduce ``ping-pongquot; path switching (enabled by a stabilization factor), and ACO-based Bandwidth Aggregation scheme (ACO-BA) that contributes to provide a cross-layer optimal bandwidth aggregation scheme. The results gained by a close realistic simulation topology show that how CMT-ACO outperforms existing CMT protocol in terms of performance and quality of service in multi-homed SCTP-based wireless networks.