Fair Allocation of Utilities in Multirate Multicast Networks: A Framework for Unifying Diverse Fairness Objectives
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decision theory
iterative methods
multicast communication
optimisation
resource allocation
telecommunication congestion control
congestion control
fair utility allocation
global convergence
multicast communication network
multirate networks
nonlinear optimization
polynomial complexity
utility function
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Abstract
We study fairness in a multicast network. We assume that different receivers of the same session can receive information at different rates. We study fair allocation of utilities, where utility of a bandwidth is an arbitrary function of the bandwidth. The utility function is not strictly increasing, nor continuous in general. We discuss fairness issues in this general context. Fair allocation of utilities can be modeled as a nonlinear optimization problem. However, nonlinear optimization techniques do not terminate in a finite number of iterations in general. We present an algorithm for computing a fair utility allocation. Using specific fairness properties, we show that this algorithm attains global convergence and yields a fair allocation in polynomial number of iterations.