A new performance measure for statistical multiplexing: perspective of the individual source

The notion of perceptible degradation of quality of the received signal seen by an individual user is introduced. It is proposed that the design of high-speed networks that support real-time traffic be carried out on the basis of a new performance measure, which is defined as the expected number of perceptible degradations that a customer is likely to encounter per unit of time. By using fluid-flow models, an analytical methodology is obtained for calculating the new performance measure. The method is illustrated by representative numerical examples from voice and video traffic for various link speeds and buffer sizes