A Low-Overhead Rate Control Algorithm for Maximizing Aggregate Receiver Utility for Multirate Multicast Sessions

In multirate multicasting, different users (receivers) within the same multicast group could receive service at different rates, depending on user requirements and network congestion level. Compared to unirate multicasting, this provides more flexibility to the user, and allows more efficient usage of network resources. In this paper, we address the rate control problem for multirate multicast sessions, with the objective of maximizing the total receiver utility. This aggregate utility maximization problem not only takes into account the heterogeneity in user requirements, but also provides a unified framework for diverse fairness objectives. We propose an algorithm for this problem and show, through analysis and simulation, that it converges to the optimal rates. In spite of the non-separability of the problem, the solution that we develop is completely decentralized, scalable and does not require the network to know the receiver utilities. Moreover, the algorithm requires very simple computations both for the user and the network, and also has very low overhead of network congestion feedback.

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