A Brief Review of Multipath TCP for Vehicular Networks

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is one of the most important extensions to TCP that enables the use of multiple paths in data transmissions for a TCP connection. In MPTCP, the end hosts transmit data across a number of TCP subflows simultaneously on one connection. MPTCP can sufficiently utilize the bandwidth resources to improve the transmission efficiency while providing TCP fairness to other TCP connections. Meanwhile, it also offers resilience due to multipath data transfers. MPTCP attracts tremendous attention from the academic and industry field due to the explosive data growth in recent times and limited network bandwidth for each single available communication interface. The vehicular Internet-of-Things systems, such as cooperative autonomous driving, require reliable high speed data transmission and robustness. MPTCP could be a promising approach to solve these challenges. In this paper, we first conduct a brief survey of existing MPTCP studies and give a brief overview to multipath routing. Then we discuss the significance technical challenges in applying MPTCP for vehicular networks and point out future research directions.