Performance bounds for rate envelope multiplexing

In QoS guaranteed communication networks, such as ATM, several classes of traffic streams with widely varying characteristics share common transmission resources. To achieve high utilization of these networks, while providing appropriate grade of service for all connections, the development of powerful traffic management algorithms is a central issue. Due to scalability reasons traffic control functions like flow, congestion and admission control often need simple and efficient characterization of traffic using mainly aggregate characteristics instead of using information about all the individual flows. In this paper, the saturation probability as a possible performance measure of aggregate traffic on a communication link is discussed. This performance metric, also referred to as the tail distribution of aggregate traffic, is essential in traffic control and management algorithms of high-speed networks including also the prospective QoS Internet. In this paper, using the Chernoff bounding method, efficient closed-form bounds have been derived for the saturation probability for the case when little information is available on the aggregate traffic. The performance of these estimates is also shown by means of numerical examples.