A Robust Flow Control Framework for Heterogenous Network Access

We investigate a novel robust flow control framework for heterogeneous network access by devices with multi- homing capabilities. Towards this end, we develop an H_infin-optimal control formulation for allocating rates to devices on multiple access networks with heterogeneous time-varying characteristics. H_infin analysis and design allow for the coupling between different devices to be relaxed by treating the dynamics for each device as independent of the others. Thus, the distributed end-to-end rate control scheme proposed in this work relies on minimum information and achieves fair and robust rate allocation for the devices. An efficient utilization of the access networks is established through an equilibrium analysis in the static case. We perform measurement tests to collect traces of the available bandwidth on various WLANs and Ethernet. Through simulations, our approach is compared with AIMD and LQG schemes. In addition, the efficiency, fairness, and robustness of the H_infin-optimal rate controller developed are demonstrated via simulations using the measured real world network characteristics.