A congestion control scheme for continuous media streaming applications

Abstract

In this paper a novel congestion control scheme is proposed that aims at providing a smoother and reduced loss rate adaptation behavior compared to that under the basic Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AI/MD) scheme; such a scheme is expected to be more appropriate for continuous media streaming applications. The basic features of the proposed scheme are that: (a) the rate increment is modulated by the distance between the flow’s current rate and a targeted maximum rate determined by the streaming application; (b) the multiplicative decrease factor is shaped by the induced packet losses. These features are responsible for a dynamic and self-adjusting rate adaptation behavior that is shown to improve convergence to fairness, the oscillatory behavior and induced packet losses. Numerical results illustrate the good properties and intrinsic advantages of the proposed scheme.