End-to-End Rate Control in Communication Networks Considering User-Level Satisfactions

In this paper, we consider a rate control problem in communication networks based on the network utility maximization framework. To accurately model the satisfaction of a user to its service, we propose a new concept of the utility function, which is called a user-level utility function, considering both transmitting and receiving sessions of a user together. We then formulate an optimization problem for rate control with user-level utility functions and develop a distributed rate control algorithm.

I. Introduction

Since the publication of the seminal paper by Kelly [1], the network utility maximization (NUM) framework has been used for various resource allocation problems in communication networks. Especially, it is extensively used to study rate control in the Internet (See [2] and references therein.). In the NUM framework, each user has a utility function which represents its satisfaction to the service according to the amount of resource allocation. In this framework, it is important to assign an appropriate utility function to each user that can model its satisfaction to the service accurately.