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This paper proposes a mechanism for equation-based congestion control for unicast traffic. Most best-effort traffic in the current Internet is well-served by the dominant transport protocol, TCP. However, traffic such as best-effort unicast streaming multimedia could find use for a TCP-friendly congestion control mechanism that refrains from reducing the sending rate in half in response to a single packet drop. With our mechanism, the sender explicitly adjusts its sending rate as a function of the measured rate of loss events, where a loss event consists of one or more packets dropped within a single round-trip time. We use both simulations and experiments over the Internet to explore performance.We consider equation-based congestion control a promising avenue of development for congestion control of multicast traffic, and so an additional motivation for this work is to lay a sound basis for the further development of multicast congestion control.

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INTRODUCTIONWith the worldwide availability of a large swath of spectrum at the 60 GHz band for unlicensed use, we are starting to see an emergence of new technologies enabling Wi-Fi communication in this frequency band. However, signal propagation at the 60 GHz band significantly differs from that at the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Therefore, efficient use of this vast spectrum resource requires a fundamental rethinking of the operation of Wi-Fi and a transition from omnidirectional to directional wireless medium usage. The IEEE 802.11ad amendment addresses these challenges, bringing multi-gigabit-per-second throughput and new application scenarios to Wi-Fi users. These new uses include instant wireless synchronization, high-speed media file exchange between mobile devices without fixed network infrastructure, and wireless cable replacement (e.g., to connect to high definition wireless displays).The most significant difference in 60 GHz propagation behavior is increased signal attenuation. At a typical IEEE 802.11ad range of 10 m, additional attenuation of 22 dB compared to the 5 GHz band is predicted by the Friis transmission equation, resulting from the frequencydependent difference in antenna aperture. In contrast, oxygen absorption plays a minor role over short-range distances, even though it peaks at 60 GHz [1]. Furthermore, 60 GHz communication is characterized by a quasi-optical propagation behavior [2] where the received signal is dominated by the line of sight (LOS) path and first order reflections from strong reflecting materials. As an example, metallic surfaces were found to be strong reflectors and allow non-LOS (NLOS) communication [2]. Concrete materials, on the other hand, cause additional large signal attenuation and can easily create a blockage. Thus, 60 GHz communication is more suitable to in-room environments where sufficient reflectors are present.This article discusses the design assumption resulting from the millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) propagation characteristics and related adaptation to the 802.11 architecture. We further present typical device configurations, an overview of the IEEE 802.11ad physical (PHY) layer, and the newly introduced personal basic service set network architecture. This is followed by an in-depth description of the IEEE 802.11ad beamforming (BF) mechanism and hybrid medium access control (MAC) design, which are the central elements to facilitate directional communication. DIRECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONThe IEEE 802.11ad amendment to the 802.11 standard defines a directional communication scheme that takes advantage of beamforming antenna gain to cope with increased attenuation in the 60 GHz band [1]. With quasi-optical propagation behavior, low reflectivity, and high attenuation, beamforming results in a highly directional signal focus. Based on this behavior, the standard introduces a novel concept of "virtual" antenna sectors [3] that discretize the antenna azimuth. IEEE 802.11ad sectors can be implemented either using precomputed antenna weight vectors for a phased antenna arr...