Low-delay scheduling for Internet of Vehicles: load-balanced multipath communication with FEC

The proliferation of devices with multiple wireless interfaces and (automobile) manufacturers' interest in implementing reliable connectivity for vehicles create an ideal scenario for multipath transmission control protocol (MPTCP) over vehicular networks. Next generation vehicular networks will be highly dynamic and exploit MPTCP over various wireless technologies including WiFi and 5th generation (5G) cellular networks to form the Internet of vehicles (IoV). However, the probability of packet loss can be high and/or packets arrive at the destination out-of-order due to time-varying heterogeneous wireless paths. Further, the IoV traffic is delay sensitive, which urges the need to investigate MPTCP algorithms for reliable communication over heterogeneous lossy networks, while satisfying delay constraints. We approach these challenges by jointly using load balancing and forward error correction (FEC) for performing coupled congestion control inside MPTCP. As a result, the proposed MPTCP-IoV is TCP-friendly by design, and provably stable and convergent to a unique equilibrium point. In addition, a comprehensive mathematical analysis (developed to approximate the reordering delay) is carried out and shown that the delay penalty for MPTCP-IoV over such networks becomes insignificant when considering the potential gains obtained by the convergence of multiple networks. Experiments are carried out and the results demonstrate these characteristics.