Multipath routing for cellular system core networks

The paper proposes and analyzes source routing techniques applied to signalling or high QoS packets in a cellular data network. Source routing is used to replicate each packet on different paths in the wired core network, with the aim to reduce the packet drop in case of network congestion so that the performance of the whole end-to-end link, including wireless access, increases. A theory has been developed to verify the trade-off between the overhead introduced by the packet replication and the performance improvement. As performance factors, the average packet drop probability and the average time to reach destination have been considered. Simulations have been reported to validate the theory.