Broadband communications systems

In order to effectively transport digital compressed video over Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN) with Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), the characteristics of the video source traffic should be understood. The nature of the video traffic depends primarily on the source, the content of the video and the coding algorithm that removes redundancies for efficient transmission over networks. In this study, video conference data encoded using a subband coding scheme, Digital Video Compression System (DVCS), is analyzed to determine its characteristics. Several video traffic sources are multiplexed through an ATM network node with limited capacity and the performance of this environment is evaluated by using a simulation technique. The simulation results are presented for the performance measures for varying traffic and network conditions.

This dissertation proposes YACAD (Yet Another Congestion Avoidance Design for ATM-based Networks), a congestion prevention model that includes admission control, traffic shaping, and link-by-link flow control for ATM-based networks. Network traffic in this model is composed of real-time traffic and data traffic. As real-time traffic is delay-sensitive and connection-oriented, its call acceptance is based upon the effective bandwidth at all nodes. Effective bandwidth is defined as a vector of bandwidth and maximum node delay. As data traffic can be either connection-oriented or connectionless, it is subject to link-by-link flow control based on a criterion known as effective buffer which is defined as a scalar of buffer size. Data traffic is not delay-sensitive but is loss-sensitive. Traffic shaping is imposed on real-time traffic to ensure a smooth inflow of real-time cells. YACAD also allocates a large buffer (fat bucket) to data traffic to accommodate sudden long bursts of data cells. Absence of data cell loss is a major feature of YACAD. Two simulation studies on the performance of the model are conducted. Analyses of the simulation results show that the proposed congestion avoidance model can achieve congestion-free networking and bounded network delays for real-time traffic at high levels of channel utilization. The maximum buffer requirements for loss-free cell delivery for data traffic, and the cell loss probabilities for real-time traffic are also obtained. In addition, results of performance comparisons to other similar models have shown that YACAD outperforms several other leaky-bucket based congestion control methods in terms of cell loss probability for real-time traffic. The simulation source program has also been verified using existing queueing theories, and the Paired-t Confidence Interval method with satisfactory results at 99% confidence level.