  Named Data Networking (NDN) employs small-sized Interest packets to retrieve
large-sized Data packets. Given the half-duplex nature of wireless links,
Interest packets frequently contend for the channel with Data packets, leading
to throughput degradation. In this work, we present a novel idea called BLEnD,
an Interest-bundling technique that encodes multiple Interests into one at the
sender and decodes at the receiver. The major design challenges are to reduce
the number of Interest transmissions without impacting the one-Interest
one-Data principle embedded everywhere in NDN architecture and implementation,
and support flow/congestion control mechanisms that usually use Interest
packets as signals. BLEnD achieves these by bundling/unbundling Interests at
the link adaptation layer, keeping all NDN components unaware and unaffected.
Over a one-hop WiFi link, BLEnD improves application throughput by 30%. It may
also be used over multiple hops and be improved in a number of ways.
