Performance Evaluation of a Hierarchical Rate Allocation Algorithm in the Presence of Background VBR Traffic

The proportional fairness criterion, which was first proposed by F.P. Kelly and his colleagues, has a number of properties in allocating user rates. For example, it resembles the AIMD in the TCP-Vegas~[1] in rate allocation to users and there exists a well-established stability analysis in Kelly's work relating to the stability of the rate allocation algorithm. Another outstanding feature is that Kelly et al. try to solve the optimization problem of maximizing the aggregate utility of users in a distributed manner, by decomposing the overall system problem into two subproblems. These subproblems can be solved by the network and individual users by introducing a pricing scheme~[2]. In the current work, a new high-speed second-order rate allocation algorithm has been proposed, which is based on the Jacobi method. The performance of the algorithm, under user arrival and departure and background variable bit-rate traffic, is evaluated, in comparison with the conventional Kelly's algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms that of Kelly in convergence speed. For short-time users, the proposed algorithm assigns more rates than that of Kelly.