Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 1, Pages 7-32
doi:10.1155/MPE.2005.7

Real-time feedback control of computer networks based on predicted state estimation

N. U. Ahmed and Hui Song

School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1N 6N5, Ontario, Canada

Received 27 July 2004

Copyright © 2005 N. U. Ahmed and Hui Song. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We present a real-time feedback control strategy to optimize the dynamic performance of a computer communication network. In previous studies closely related to this topic, feedback delay, arising from communication delay, was shown to degrade system performance. Considering this negative impact of delay, we propose a new control law which predicts the traffic in advance and exercises control based on the predicted traffic. We demonstrate through simulation experiments that the predictive feedback control law substantially improves the system performance.