Improving TFRC Performance against Bandwidth Change during Handovers

TCP-friendly rate control (TFRC) is a congestion control mechanism that can compete fairly with TCP while maintaining a much smoother transmission rate. The smoothness is achieved at the cost of responsiveness, which makes it slow to settle down when handed-over to a different network. In this paper we will study how to improve the TFRC performance when the available bandwidth is changed during a handover. An enhancement is proposed that can eliminate most of the heavy packet loss during a bandwidth-decreased handover. The definition and conditions of a smooth TFRC handover is also provided. The improvement over the original TFRC is proved with simulation results.