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ScalaNC — Scalable heterogeneous link aggregation enabled by Network Coding

The aggregation of multiple carriers and even heterogeneous links is a well established method to boost data rates in wireless networks. At the same time, Network Coding has been proven as an efficient and robust mechanism to distribute content in mesh networks or cloud storages. In this paper, we introduce with ScalaNC a new method of heterogeneous link aggregation, which requires no changes in the network infrastructure and incorporates Network Coding to allow for a scalable trade-off between speed, latency and security in terms of confidentiality (information distribution) of the aggregated end-to-end connection. The proposed method is particularly useful in emergency response scenarios, in which first responders need to access cloud storages to retrieve data in harsh communication environments. Using the scalable parameterization the users can increase real-time capability, speed or security depending on the actual needs. ScalaNC is validated with an experimental setup, in which the increase in real-time capability, goodput and security with high packet error rates was demonstrated: while the goodput of an aggregated link operated with Multipath TCP is reduced to around 50 % with occurring packet errors, the ScalaNC-enabled aggregated link maintains stable goodput.