  QoS-aware networking applications such as real-time streaming and video
surveillance systems require nearly fixed average end-to-end delay over long
periods to communicate efficiently, although may tolerate some delay variations
in short periods. This variability exhibits complex dynamics that makes rate
control of such applications a formidable task. This paper addresses rate
allocation for heterogeneous QoS-aware applications that preserves the
long-term end-to-end delay constraint while, similar to Dynamic Network Utility
Maximization (DNUM), strives to achieve the maximum network utility aggregated
over a fixed time interval. Since capturing temporal dynamics in QoS
requirements of sources is allowed in our system model, we incorporate a novel
time-coupling constraint in which delay-sensitivity of sources is considered
such that a certain end-to-end average delay for each source over a
pre-specified time interval is satisfied. We propose DA-DNUM algorithm, as a
dual-based solution, which allocates source rates for the next time interval in
a distributed fashion, given the knowledge of network parameters in advance.
Through numerical experiments, we show that DA-DNUM gains higher average link
utilization and a wider range of feasible scenarios in comparison with the
best, to our knowledge, rate control schemes that may guarantee such
constraints on delay.
