Application-layer throughput control for mobile users in heterogeneous networks

In mobile wireless environments, bandwidth fluctuations are unpredictable, and the throughput experienced by mobile user applications is dynamic. Real-time tracking of bandwidth variations is desirable to effectively manage the throughput available to a user application at any given time. We propose a throughput control mechanism for applicability over wireless networks, transparent to the underlying transport and network technologies. To improve the utilization of the available throughput, we develop a two-component application-layer, real-time control technique for mobile users traversing diverse networks with varying service rates. We first calculate the weighted average throughput experienced by the user´s application. Secondly, we appropriately adjust the download rate to the user based on the real-time average throughput information. In this paper, we detail the throughput control algorithm and provide some initial simulation results.