Model-based control of communication networks

This paper presents a design procedure for access and congestion control in communication networks. Motivated by an analysis of the characteristics of communication networks, the proposed approach makes use of model-based control methodologies, i.e. Internal Model Control, Model Reference Control and the Smith's principle. The design procedure is then applied to the problems of access control in satellite networks and congestion control in terrestrial packet networks. The resulting schemes, obtained with the aim of providing full link utilization and congestion avoidance, respectively, are equal to two protocols in the literature, and, additionally, are enhanced to provide robustness with respect to time-varying delays.