Multiplexing VBR traffic flows with guaranteed application-level QoS using statistical rate monotonic scheduling

The data units transmitted by an application may vary in size while being constant in rate, which results in a variable bit rate (VBR) data flow. That data flow requires QoS guarantees. Statistical multiplexing is inadequate, because no guarantees can be made and no firewall property exists between different data flows. In this paper, we present a novel resource management paradigm for the maintenance of application-level QoS for VBR flows. Our paradigm is based on statistical rate monotonic scheduling (SRMS), in which: (1) each application generates its variable-size data units at a fixed rate; (2) the partial delivery of data units is of no value to the application; and (3) the QoS guarantee extended to the application is the probability that an arbitrary data unit will be successfully transmitted through the network to/from the application