Patent ID: 7701851

Claim:
A transmission bit rate control mechanism for a packet-based communication system, wherein the communication system comprises: a sender that transmits packet data at a certain transmission bit rate that can vary over time and is set not to exceed a given maximum transmission bit rate; a receiver that receives transmitted packet data from the sender; and a packet-based communication network that provides a communication path between the sender and the receiver; and wherein the transmission bit rate mechanism comprises: a receiver recording mechanism which receives transmission time information included in the transmitted packets by the sender, and computes and records statistical parameters of the received packets; and a receiver processing mechanism which selectively computes a new transmission bit rate using the recorded statistical parameters, and communicates the new transmission bit rate to the sender over the communication network; wherein the receiver recording mechanism is configured to record estimates of packet inter-arrival jitter; and wherein the receiver processing mechanism is configured to selectively compute a new transmission bit rate by: computing an estimate of the packet inter-arrival jitter over a given time period; comparing the packet inter-arrival jitter estimate with a threshold; and if the threshold is exceeded, communicating to the sender that its transmission bit rate should be set to a fraction of the current transmission bit rate, the fraction being equal to the ratio of the jitter estimate to the time period.