TCP-friendly Rate Control Performance Research Articles

Cross Layer Design for Video Streaming in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are becoming more essential to wireless communications due to growing popularity of mobile devices. However, MANETs do not seem to effectively support multimedia applications and especially video transmission. In this work, we propose a cross-layer design that aims to improve the performance of video transmission using TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC). Our design provides priority to video packets and exploits information from the MAC layer in order to improve TFRC's performance. The proposed cross-layer design utilizes SNR measurements along the routing path, in order to make the route reconstruction procedure more efficient. Simulation results show that both the use of traffic classification and the SNR utilization lead to important improvements in terms of end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS).

무선 네트워크에서 스트리밍 서비스의 품질향상을 위한 Cross-layer 기반 적응적 전송률 조절 기법

무선 네트워크에서 TFRC (TCP-Friendly Rate Control)는 불안정한 채널 특성으로 인해 발생하는 손실을 모두 혼잡 손실로 인지할 뿐만 아니라, 링크 계층에서의 재전송 기법과 채널 경쟁 오버헤드로 인해 증가된 RTT(Round Trip Time)를 적용할 경우 전송 성능이 저하된다. 본 논문에서는 무선 네트워크 환경에서 스트리밍 서비스의 품질 향상을 위한 Cross-layer 기반의 적응적 전송률 조절 기법을 제안한다. 제안하는 기법은 TFRC의 전송률 향상을 위해 새로운 RTT 측정 및 패킷 손실 구별 기법을 적용하였다. 실험을 통해 제안한 기법을 적용한 TFRC의 전송 성능이 향상됨을 확인하였다. TFRC(TCP-Friendly Rate Control) has a performance degradation in wireless networks because it performs congestion control by judging all the losses occurred in wireless networks as a congestion indicator. It is also degraded by the increased Round Trip Time(RTT) due to packet retransmission and contention overhead in the link layer. In this paper, we propose an adaptive rate control scheme based on cross-layer to improve the quality of streaming services in the wireless networks. It provides new RTT estimation and loss discrimination methods to improve transmission rate of TFRC. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the performance of TFRC.

An Improved TCP Friendly Rate Control Algorithm for Wireless Networks

SUMMARY TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) has been widely used in the Internet multimedia streaming applications. However, performance of traditional TFRC algorithm degrades significantly when d eployed over wireless networks. Although numerous TFRC variants have been proposed to improve the performance of TFRC over wireless networks, designing a TFRC algorithm with graceful performance both in throughput and fairness still remains a great challenge. In this paper, a novel T FRC algorithm, named TFRC-FIT, is proposed to improve the performance of TFRC over wireless environments. In the proposed approach, the behavior of multiple TFRC flows is simulated in single connection, while the number of simulated flows is adjusted by the network queuing delay. Thr ough this mechanism, TFRC-FIT can fully utilize the capacity of wireless networks, while maintaining good fairness and TCP friendliness. Both theoretical analysis and extensive experiments over hardware network emulator, Planetlab test bed as well as commercial 3G wireless networks are carried out to characterize and validate the performance of our proposed approach.

Throughput Analysis of TCP-Friendly Rate Control in Mobile Hotspots

By integrating wireless wide area networks (WWANs) and wireless local area networks (WLANs), mobile hotspot technologies enable seamless Internet multimedia services to users on-board a vehicle. In this paper, we investigate the performance of TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) protocol supporting multimedia services in mobile hotspots. To quantify the throughput of TFRC flows in mobile hotspots, we first develop discrete-time queuing models for the WWAN link and the WLAN link. We then derive the steady state TFRC throughput using an iterative algorithm. Analytical and extensive simulation results reveal how the end-to-end TFRC throughput is affected by the number of users in a mobile hotspot, the vehicle velocity, the WWAN/WLAN link bandwidth, the retransmission limit, and the buffer size. It is found that the WWAN channel profile and link bandwidth have significant impacts on the TFRC throughput, and therefore suitable resource allocation and admission control are indispensable for the quality and efficiency of multimedia services in mobile hotspots.

A Two-Phase Loss Differentiation Algorithm for Improving TFRC Performance in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11 WLANs, packet losses may be due to buffer overflow, transmission errors, or collisions. Therefore, the performance of TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) in IEEE 802.11 WLANs largely depends on its ability to differentiate packet losses resulting from network congestion (due to buffer overflow and collisions) and those from transmission errors. In this paper, an enhanced TFRC (E-TFRC) protocol is proposed to detect and identify the cause of packet loss events through a novel two-phase loss differentiation algorithm (TP-LDA). The packet losses due to buffer overflow and those due to failed transmissions in WLANs are first differentiated. For failed transmissions, the fraction of those due to collisions is obtained with the assistance of the lower layer. By employing TP-LDA, only the packet losses due to buffer overflow and collisions are notified to the sender for appropriate flow and congestion control. To quantify the performance of TFRC and E-TFRC over WLANs, a continuous-time Markov chain based on a new WLAN link model is developed by considering both collisions and transmission errors. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate that, with appropriate loss differentiation, E-TFRC can achieve higher throughput than TFRC in WLANs with different channel profiles.

Equation based rate control scheme for video streaming over wireless channels with link level ARQ

Equation based TCP-friendly rate control (TFRC) protocol has been proposed to support video streaming applications. In order to improve TFRC performance in wireless channels, the link level automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme is usually deployed. However, ARQ cannot ensure strict delay guarantees, especially over multihop links. This paper introduces a theoretical model to deduce an equation for packet size adjustment in transport layer to minimize retransmission delay by taking into consideration the causative reasons inducing retransmission in link layer. An enhanced TFRC (ETFRC) scheme is proposed integrating TFRC with variable packet size policy. Simulation results demonstrate that higher goodput, lower packet loss rate (PLR), lower frame transmission delay and jitter with good fairness can be achieved by our proposed mechanism.

Corruption and reordering robust TCP-friendly rate control

TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) mechanism was introduced for regulated multimedia streaming over the Internet. TFRC unnecessarily reduces the application sending rate in wired network scenarios with packet reordering. TFRC also gives poor performance over wireless access networks. The poor performance of TFRC on paths that reorder packets and on wireless access networks can be attributed to its inability to differentiate packet losses due to congestion from other network conditions like packet reordering and corruption. We first examine the performance of TFRC over wireless network with UDP-lite that reduces packet drops over the wireless link. Next we propose few methods to make TFRC robust in packet reordering scenarios and evaluate the performance of TFRC with these schemes incorporated. Then we suggest a modification to TFRC from being loss-based to ECN-marking based. ECN-marking based TFRC performs rate regulation according to actual network congestion experienced and is robust to packet reordering and corruption in the network. We provide the results of our extensive experiments on a network testbed for various scenarios with packet corruption and/or packet reordering. We also observe the impact of ECN-based TFRC on concurrent TCP flows.

Effect of vertical handovers on performance of TCP-friendly rate control

An intersystem or vertical handover is a key enabling mechanism for next generations of mobile communication systems. A vertical handover can cause an abrupt change of up to two orders of magnitude in link bandwidth and latency. It is hard for end-to-end congestion control to adapt promptly to such changes. This is especially a concern for slowly responsive congestion control algorithms, such as TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC). TFRC is designed to provide a smooth transmission rate for real-time applications and, therefore, is less responsive to changes in network conditions than TCP. Using measurements and simulation, we show that TFRC has significant difficulties adapting after a vertical handover. TFRC receives only a fraction of TCP throughput over a fast link, but can be grossly unfair to concurrent TCP flows after handover to a slow link. We show that two proposals based on overbuffering and an explicit handover notification are effective solutions to these problems. Using them, TFRC can quickly adapt to new link characteristics after a handover, while otherwise maintaining a smooth transmission rate.