A Cooperative Differential Game Model for Multiuser Rate-Based Flow Control

Flow control is one typical resource management tool. Its objectives are to adjust the traffic in the network, and resolve data traffic congestion, maximize the utilization of available bandwidth resource and realize fairness among different sources. Taking more consideration on the interaction and the dynamic characteristics of the flow, in this paper, we propose a cooperative differential game of flow control. Our goal is to assign sources with appropriate transmission rate levels so as to the queue length in the bottleneck link is optimal for the network performance and their benefits are maximal. We derive a payment distribution mechanism that would constitute a time-consistent solution and guarantee individual rationality.