Bandwidth Aggregation through Concurrent Multipath Transfer of Data in Wireless Networks: A Survey

Next generation wireless communication networks are featured with heterogeneity where multiple wireless technologies exist together. In the intersection of coverage areas of these different technologies, receiver having multiple interfaces can access them concurrently so as to improve the performance and this prompts bandwidth aggregation. A larger logical link can be created by aggregating low bandwidth links. The same link can be used by a multimode terminal for applications that are demanding high-bandwidth. Advantages of bandwidth aggregation and the challenges that are faced in attaining bandwidth aggregation are discussed in this paper. An overview of the architecture, different approaches and bandwidth aggregation techniques employed in various layers of network are highlighted.