Autonomous decentralized flow control allowing control timing independent of link length

Abstract

We have proposed diffusion flow control (DFC) as a technique for controlling a network, using an analogy of the diffusion phenomenon. In DFC, although each node in a network handles its local traffic flow only on the basis of the information it is aware of, the diffusion effect of DFC distributes the packet density in a network, so avoiding packet loss. In our previous work, we have assumed that each node knows the lengths of the links adjacent to it and we used control timing depending on the link length. In this paper, we describe an extension of the DFC in which the control timing is independent of the link length so allowing DFC to be used in a mobile ad hoc network.