  The explosive demand for data has called for solution approaches that range
from spectrally agile cognitive radios with novel spectrum sharing, to use of
higher frequency spectrum as well as smaller and denser cell deployments with
diverse access technologies, referred to as heterogeneous networks (HetNets).
Simultaneously, advances in electronics and storage, has led to the advent of
wireless devices equipped with multiple radio interfaces (e.g. WiFi, WiMAX,
LTE, etc.) and the ability to store and efficiently process large amounts of
data. Motivated by the convergence of HetNets and multi-platform radios, we
propose HetNetwork Coding as a means to utilize the available radio interfaces
in parallel along with network coding to increase wireless data throughput.
Specifically we explore the use of random linear network coding at the network
layer where packets can travel through multiple interfaces and be received via
multihoming. Using both simulations and experimentation with real hardware on
WiFi and WiMAX platforms, we study the scaling of throughput enabled by such
HetNetwork coding. We find from our simulations and experiments that the use of
this method increases the throughput, with greater gains achieved for cases
when the system is heavily loaded or the channel quality is poor. Our results
also reveal that the throughput gains achieved scale linearly with the number
of radio interfaces at the nodes.
