An End-To-End Rate Control Protocol for Intermittently Connected Networks

In this paper, we propose a rate control algorithm for intermittently connected networks (ICNs), which represent a type of delay/disruption-tolerant network (DTN). ICNs have quite different characteristics from traditional TCP/IP networks that lead to problems that do not occur in legacy networks, such as network partitioning, long and varying delays, high loss probability, and asymmetric data transmission rates. To overcome these issues, many researches have been carried out in recent years. The results have helped in achieving smooth communication between nodes, but there are still some weak points. If many messages are input by the nodes in a network, these schemes do not work well. For resolving this problem, we propose the novel sending rate control algorithm in an additive increase/multiplicative decrease (AIMD) manner. To detect network congestion, we measure the receiving rate, the one-way delay, and the number of copies. When measured receiving rate is increased, the congestion window (cwnd) is increased; otherwise, cwnd is decreased. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm can adjust the sending rate of nodes to avoid network congestion and provides fair share of the network for the nodes.