Robust Delimitation of Aggregated Packets Based on Viterbi Decoding With Natural Redundancy in Protocols

This letter provides a cross-layer perspective for the de-aggregation of aggregated packets. First, we analyze the natural redundancy in protocols that can be leveraged for delimitation. Second, we propose a new path metric, focusing on maximizing the likelihood of all potential redundant protocol fields. Subsequently, a Viterbi-based path search algorithm is developed to achieve the theoretical optimum. When repeated fields are available in the protocol stack, we introduce a decision feedback mechanism to further enhance performance. Tests conducted on aggregated High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) protocol packets demonstrate that our method can approach the approximate performance upper limit with significantly reduced complexity and improved operability.