Abstract— Parallel Wireless Communicationss is an emerging area of research that enables mobile clients to access and utilize multiple wireless networks concurrently. Thiss paper explores concurrent bandwidth aggregation techniques tto enable parallel wireless communications on mobile devicces. Concurrent aggregation can be performed using wireless modems on one device or cooperatively across devices within wwireless proximity of each other.. The aggregation can be aachieved on the application-layer, transport layer like Multi pathTCP, or on layers below IP such as the RLC layer. Thhese schemes are compared. In general, aggregation on the lowerr layer is closer to the client device and easier to adapt to the varrying channel and loading conditions. However, lower layer aggreggation needs more changes to wireless access stratum infrastructture. Aggregation above the IP layer is simpler to implement. A fefeasibility study of MultipathTCP aggregation over multiple WWAANs is presented. The aggregation scheme on the RLC layer in eevolved HSDPA is also presented, including protocol design aand performance evaluation. 

Keywords- Parallel Wireless Communicatiions; Concurrent Bandwidth Aggregation; Application-layer aggreegation; MultiLink protocols; MultipathTCP; Multi-link RLC; Wi reless Wide Area Networks;  Heterogeneous Networks; Tunneling; Cooperation

Cite:Dilip Krishnaswamy, Danlu Zhang, Dirceu Cavendish, Weiyan Ge, Samir S. Soliman, Bibhu Mohanty, and Srinivasa Eravelli, "COBA: Concurrent Bandwidth Aggregation - A Case Study in Parallel Wireless Communications," Journal of Communications, vol. 7, no.7, pp.524-537, 2012. Doi: 10.4304/jcm.7.7.524-537