Software-Based Implementation of LTE/Wi-Fi Aggregation and Its Impact on Higher Layer Protocols
Software-Based Implementation of LTE/Wi-Fi Aggregation and Its Impact on Higher Layer Protocols
复制标题
基于软件的 LTE/Wi-Fi 聚合实现及其对高层协议的影响
DOI：
10.1109/icc.2018.8422694
复制
发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
I. Demirkol
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
D. Ibarra;Nitin Desai;I. Demirkol
由于通过蜂窝网络在移动的设备中消耗的数据的快速增长，提供更高数据速率的解决方案是移动的联网社区的重要目标。一种这样的解决方案是移动的技术（最常见的LTE）与无线LAN解决方案（最常见的Wi-Fi）的聚合。鉴于其潜在影响，3GPP设计了LTE/Wi-Fi聚合（LWA）规范，其定义了eNB和Wi-Fi接入点（AP）之间的紧密耦合。在本文中，我们实现和评估LWA解决方案，并通过物理实验将其性能与完全卸载（仅Wi-Fi）和无卸载（仅LTE）的性能进行比较。开发的原型LWA解决方案是基于开源和商品硬件，这保证了低成本和易于实现的LWA解决方案。聚合和卸载过程由eNB管理，因此，核心网络保持完整而没有任何修改。通过物理实验详细介绍了这三种策略对TCP和UDP流量以及上行和下行连接的网络性能。在采用LWA策略的TCP传输中，Wi-Fi和LTE链路之间的不同延迟会导致由于数据段的无序到达而导致的性能下降。为此，我们评估了一个解决方案，其中添加了人工延迟，以减少无序数据包的数量。
Due to the fast growing of data consumed in mobile devices through cellular networks, solutions that provide higher data rates are an important target for the mobile networking community. One such solution is the aggregation of mobile technologies (most commonly LTE) with wireless LAN solutions (most commonly Wi-Fi). Seeing its potential impact, 3GPP has devised the LTE/Wi-Fi Aggregation (LWA) specification, which defines a tight coupling between eNBs and Wi-Fi Access Points (APs). In this paper, we implement and evaluate an LWA solution, and compare its performance to the one for full offloading (only Wi-Fi) and no offloading (only LTE) through physical experimentation. The developed prototype LWA solution is based on open source and commodity hardware, which promises a low-cost and easily implementable LWA solution. Aggregation and offloading process are managed by the eNB, therefore, the core network remains intact without any modification. Physical experiments are done to detail the network performances for all these three policies for TCP and UDP traffic and both for uplink and downlink connections. In TCP transmissions with LWA policy, the different delays between Wi-Fi and LTE links causes the performance degradation because of the out-of-order arrivals of the segments. For this, we evaluate a solution where an artificial delay is added to reduce the number of out-of-order packets.