A self-adjusting rate adaptation scheme with good fairness and smoothness properties

A novel feedback-based rate adaptation scheme is introduced and investigated in this paper. Its main innovative characteristic is the modulation of the rate increment by the distance between a flow's present rate and an assumed targeted maximum rate as dictated by the associated application. The previous along with the shaping of the rate decrement by the reported flow's losses are responsible for a dynamic and self-adjusting behavior that is shown to improve convergence to fairness, the oscillatory behavior of the rate and the induced packet losses when compared with the basic Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AI/MD) scheme. Numerical results illustrate the good properties and intrinsic advantages of the proposed scheme both under the considered modeling assumptions, as well as under more real networking conditions by employing the ns-2 simulator. A brief comparison of the proposed scheme with the TCP-compatible schemes TFRC, IIAD and the non-AI/MD schemes AIPD, LIMPD, is included as well. Because of the aforementioned induced behavior and assumed flow's characteristics (min and max rates), the proposed congestion control scheme seems to be appropriate for regulating the rate of streaming applications.