XRC: An Explicit Rate Control for Future Cellular Networks

We propose XRC, an explicit rate control algorithm that overcomes the poor performance of commonly used TCP variants in cellular networks. XRC exploits an explicit feedback from the radio access network that is aware of the physical, network and transport layer information of all UEs as well as resource distribution policies among users with different traffic characteristics. XRC coexists fairly with other XRC and non-XRC flows at the wireless and non-wireless bottlenecks while it strictly controls queuing delay within a small threshold especially at the wireless bottleneck. XRC can be used for different access technologies such as 4G, 5G New Radio and Wi-Fi. We implement \scheme in NS-3 and examine its performance across a wide range of network loads and dynamics. When competing with TCP CUBIC at a wireless bottleneck, XRC achieves a Jain's fairness index of 99.7\% while providing a 3x lower median queueing delay compared to when CUBIC competes with CUBIC in the same setup.