Traffic smoothing effects of bit dropping in a packet voice multiplexer

The performance of a packet voice multiplexer queue in which the less significant bits of voiced packets are dropped during states of congestion in the multiplexer is examined. Using the results of simulation and analytical modeling, it is illustrated that bit dropping of voice packets significantly smooth the burstiness of superposition packet voice traffic by speeding up the packet service rate during critical periods of congestion in the queue. The smoothing effect renders it possible to approximate the superposition by a Poisson process for modeling a packet voice multiplexer with bit dropping. By comparison with a simulation, an analytical model based on the Poisson assumption is shown to produce quite accurate performance predictions. The results indicate that significant capacity and performance advantages are gained in the multiplexer as a result of the bit-dropping scheme