Rate control for multi-hop wireless networks

Ramesh Govindan
University of Southern California (USC)
Computer Science

Motivated by sensor network deployments on bridges and in habitats, we have been studying the problem of rate control in multi-hop wireless networks. Our focus has been to explore practical distributed mechanisms for fair and efficient rate control. In this talk, I will begin by describing IFRC, a rate control technique suitable for the constrained communication patterns found in sensor networks.

I will then describe more recent work on rate control in a more generalized setting, that of a multi-hop mesh network. In this work, motivated by the well-known problem of TCP flow starvation in multi-hop wireless networks, we ask what mechanisms would be necessary to ensure a fair and efficient congestion control in mesh networks. Specifically, we explore two classes of congestion control: AIMD-based designs, and those based on providing explicit feedback to sources.


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