Performance Evaluation of MPTCP on Simultaneous Use of 5G and 4G Networks

The 5G cellular network comes with a promise to provide a very high data rate at low latency, which is becoming critical for advancing technologies. Mobile operators are currently deploying the 5G cellular network worldwide. However, because of limited coverage and high susceptibility of the 5G network to obstacles, handoffs from 5G to 4G and vice versa frequently occur, especially when the user equipment (UE) is moving. These handoffs often cause significant delays in data transmission due to packet losses and retransmissions. A promising solution can be to use both 4G and 5G networks simultaneously, which can solve this problem and yield a better throughput. Multipath transmission control protocol (TCP) is an effective solution for this problem, but it requires significant performance evaluation before practical deployment. In this study, we implement an MPTCP testbed based on NS3-DCE that enables to test the performance of MPTCP schedulers and congestion control algorithms (CCAs) in both 3GPP and non-3GPP networks. Through extensive simulation experiments in a scenario where a UE simultaneously utilizes both 4G and 5G networks, we found that blocking estimation (BLEST) scheduler implemented with balanced linked adaptation (BALIA) CCA can produce the highest throughput and lowest delay. Finally, we showed how received signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR), congestion window, throughput, and packet losses are interconnected.