Application-layer throughput control for mobile users in heterogeneous networks

In mobile wireless environments, bandwidth fluctuations are unpredictable, and the throughput experienced by mobile user applications is dynamic. Real-time tracking of bandwidth variations is desirable to effectively manage the throughput available to a user application at any given time. We propose a throughput control mechanism for applicability over wireless networks, transparent to the underlying transport and network technologies. To improve the utilization of the available throughput, we develop a two-component application-layer, real-time control technique for mobile users traversing diverse networks with varying service rates. We first calculate the weighted average throughput experienced by the user's application. Secondly, we appropriately adjust the download rate to the user based on the real-time average throughput information. In this paper, we detail the throughput control algorithm and provide some initial simulation results.