Cooperative inter-stream rate control scheme for layered multicast

In a heterogeneous network, layered multicast is useful which enables receivers to determine the rate of a stream adaptively to their various capacities. Previous rate control schemes for layered multicast, however, treat each stream independently and cannot allocate the requested bandwidth to each stream when receivers subscribe to multiple streams. We propose an inter-stream rate control mechanism for layered multicast called Multiple Streams Controller (MSC), which is located at each receiver and provides cooperative rate control among layered streams by end-to-end. In our method, MSC infers the tree information shared among streams and learns the detail network state by analyzing packet loss of each stream. Judging from the information, MSC can control the rate of streams cooperatively when congestion occurs or the receiver requests the bandwidth re-allocation of streams. We give some simulation results and confirm that MSC can allocate requested bandwidth by releasing the layer of other streams and provide the stability of the quality with less packet losses and oscillations.