Robust rate control for integrated services packet networks

Research on congestion-control algorithms has traditionally focused more on performance than on robustness of the closed-loop system to changes in network conditions. As the performance of the control loop is strictly connected with the quality of service, these systems are natural candidates to be approached by the optimal control theory. Unfortunately, this approach may fail in the presence of transmission delay variations, which are unavoidable in telecommunication systems. In this paper, we first show the fragility of optimal controllers and demonstrate their instability when the control delay is not known exactly. Then we propose a robust control algorithm based on a classical proportional integral derivative scheme which does not suffer from this fragility phenomenon. Its stability versus the control delay variations, as well as versus sources that transmit less than their computed share, is studied with Nyquist analysis. The control algorithm is implemented within a simulator in the framework of the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) ABR transfer capability. The final part of the paper shows some selected results assessing the performance of the control algorithm in a realistic network environment. ABR was chosen as an example, but the control studied here can be applied in any data network to obtain a robust and reliable congestion-control scheme.