Fast link adaptation for TFRC after a handover

TCP-friendly rate control(TFRC) is an equation-based congestion control mechanism that competes fairly with TCP but has a much lower throughput variation, which makes it a better choice for streaming over the Internet. It is known that in a mobile network environment, after a handover TFRC can overshoot or under utilize the new link if the conditions there differ from those of the old link. There are different factors that affect the TFRC performance during a handover. In this paper we focus on the impact of the change in the round trip time, an aspect that is largely overlooked in the literature compared with bandwidth disparity. We find that even if the same bandwidth is assured on the new link, changes in the link latency will still cause TFRC performance degradation after the handover. A fast link adaptation mechanism is thus proposed to address the problem. Simulations show that this mechanism helps TFRC to adjust quickly to the new link without consecutive packet loss or long-time bandwidth under utilization.