This brief presents several enhancement modules to Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) in order to support stable and efficient multipath transmission with user cooperation in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The text explains how these enhancements provide a stable aggregate throughput to the upper-layer applications; guarantee a steady goodput, which is the real application-layer perceived throughput; and ensure that the local traffic of the relays is not adversely affected when the relays are forwarding data for the destination.

The performance of the proposed solutions is extensively evaluated using various scenarios. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed modules can achieve a stable aggregate throughput and significantly improve the goodput by 1.5 times on average. The brief also shows that these extensions can well respect the local traffic of the relays and motivate the relay users to provide the relaying service.

Introduction.- User Cooperation and Multipath Transmission.- System Modelling.- Subset-sum Based Relay Selection (SSRS).- Adaptive Congestion Control (ACC).- Differentiated Packet Forwarding (DPF).- Bandwidth Sharing for User Cooperation.- Conclusions and Future Directions.