A congestion control algorithm for video stream over packet switched networks

We propose an end-to-end mechanism, called the rate estimation algorithm (REA), for regulating the transmission behaviours of video sender according with the network congestion status. In this mechanism, we choose the control interval based on the self-similar nature of video stream. At the receiver side, we use t-distribution to estimate the mean rate of the video stream from the first several samples of the control interval. TITD (testing increase and testing decrease) rate adjustment is also proposed for MPEG-4 FGS. Our simulation results indicate that REA algorithm is effective in various network environments with good TCP-friendliness.