Performance analysis of an ATM network with multimedia traffic: a simulation study

Traffic and congestion control are important in enabling ATM networks to maintain the Quality of Service (QoS) required by end users. A Call Admission Control (CAC) strategy ensures that the network has sufficient resources available at the start of each call, but this does not prevent a traffic source from violating the negotiated contract. A policing strategy (User Parameter Control (UPC)) is also required to enforce the negotiated rates for a particular connection and to protect conforming users from network overload. The aim of this work is to investigate traffic policing and bandwidth management at the User to Network Interface (UNI). A policing function is proposed which is based on the leaky bucket (LB) which offers improved performance for both real time (RT) traffic such as speech and video and non-real time (non-RT) traffic, mainly data by taking into account the QoS requirements. A video cell in violation of the negotiated bit rate causes the remainder of the slice to be discarded. This 'tail clipping' provides protection for the decoder from damaged video slices. Speech cells are coded using a frequency domain coder, which places the most significant bits of a double speech sample into a high priority cell and the least significant bits into a high priority cell. In the case of congestion, the low priority cell can be discarded with little impact on the intelligibility of the received speech. However, data cells require loss-free delivery and are buffered rather than being discarded or tagged for subsequent deletion. This triple strategy is termed the super leaky bucket (SLB). Separate queues for RT and non-RT traffic, are also proposed at the multiplexer, with non pre-emptive priority service for RT traffic if the queue exceeds a predetermined threshold. If the RT queue continues to grow beyond a second threshold, then all low priority cells (mainly speech) are discarded. This scheme protects non-RT traffic from being tagged and subsequently discarded, by queueing the cells and also by throttling back non-RT sources during periods of congestion. It also prevents the RT cells from being delayed excessively in the multiplexer queue. A simulation model has been designed and implemented to test the proposal. Realistic sources have been incorporated into the model to simulate the types of traffic which could be expected on an ATM network. The results show that the S-LB outperforms the standard LB for video cells. The number of cells discarded and the resulting number of damaged video slices are significantly reduced. Dual queues with cyclic service at the multiplexer also reduce the delays experienced by RT cells. The QoS for all categories of traffic is preserved

Slight-Delay Shaped Variable Bit Rate (SD-SVBR) Technique for Video Transmission

The aim of this thesis is to present a new shaped Variable Bit Rate (VBR) for video transmission, which plays a crucial role in delivering video traffic over the Internet. This is due to the surge of video media applications over the Internet and the video typically has the characteristic of a highly bursty traffic, which leads to the Internet bandwidth fluctuation. This new shaped algorithm, referred to as Slight Delay - Shaped Variable Bit Rate (SD-SVBR), is aimed at controlling the video rate for video application transmission. It is designed based on the Shaped VBR (SVBR) algorithm and was implemented in the Network Simulator 2 (ns-2). SVBR algorithm is devised for real-time video applications and it has several limitations and weaknesses due to its embedded estimation or prediction processes. SVBR faces several problems, such as the occurrence of unwanted sharp decrease in data rate, buffer overflow, the existence of a low data rate, and the generation of a cyclical negative fluctuation. The new algorithm is capable of producing a high data rate and at the same time a better quantization parameter (QP) stability video sequence. In addition, the data rate is shaped efficiently to prevent unwanted sharp increment or decrement, and to avoid buffer overflow. To achieve the aim, SD-SVBR has three strategies, which are processing the next Group of Picture (GoP) video sequence and obtaining the QP-to-data rate list, dimensioning the data rate to a higher utilization of the leaky-bucket, and implementing a QP smoothing method by carefully measuring the effects of following the previous QP value. However, this algorithm has to be combined with a network feedback algorithm to produce a better overall video rate control. A combination of several video clips, which consisted of a varied video rate, has been used for the purpose of evaluating SD-SVBR performance. The results showed that SD-SVBR gains an impressive overall Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) value. In addition, in almost all cases, it gains a high video rate but without buffer overflow, utilizes the buffer well, and interestingly, it is still able to obtain smoother QP fluctuation

Dynamic bandwidth allocation in ATM networks

Includes bibliographical references.This thesis investigates bandwidth allocation methodologies to transport new emerging bursty traffic types in ATM networks. However, existing ATM traffic management solutions are not readily able to handle the inevitable problem of congestion as result of the bursty traffic from the new emerging services. This research basically addresses bandwidth allocation issues for bursty traffic by proposing and exploring the concept of dynamic bandwidth allocation and comparing it to the traditional static bandwidth allocation schemes

A study of the transmission of VBR encoded video over ATM networks.

by Ngai Li.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-69).Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Video Compression and Transport --- p.2Chapter 1.2 --- Research Contributions --- p.6Chapter 1.2.1 --- Joint Rate Control of VBR Encoded Video --- p.6Chapter 1.2.2 --- Transporting VBR Video on LB Controlled Channel --- p.7Chapter 1.3 --- Organization of Thesis --- p.7Chapter 2 --- Preliminary --- p.9Chapter 2.1 --- Statistical Characteristics of MPEG-1 Encoded Video --- p.9Chapter 2.2 --- Temporal and Spatial Smoothing --- p.14Chapter 2.2.1 --- Temporal Smoothing --- p.14Chapter 2.2.2 --- Spatial Smoothing --- p.15Chapter 2.3 --- A Single Source Control-Theoretic Framework for VBR-to-CBR Video Adaptation --- p.16Chapter 3 --- Joint Rate Control of VBR Encoded Video --- p.19Chapter 3.1 --- Analytical Models --- p.21Chapter 3.2 --- Analysis --- p.27Chapter 3.2.1 --- Stable Region --- p.29Chapter 3.2.2 --- Final Value of the State Variables --- p.33Chapter 3.2.3 --- Peak Values of Buffer-occupancy Deviation and Image- quality Fluctuation --- p.35Chapter 3.2.4 --- SAE of Buffer-occupancy Deviation and Image-quality Fluc- tuation --- p.42Chapter 3.3 --- Experimental Results --- p.43Chapter 3.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.48Chapter 4 --- Transporting VBR Video on LB Controlled Channel --- p.50Chapter 4.1 --- Leaky Bucket Access Control --- p.51Chapter 4.2 --- Greedy Token-usage Strategy --- p.53Chapter 4.3 --- Non-greedy Token-usage Strategy --- p.57Chapter 4.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.60Chapter 5 --- Conclusions --- p.62Chapter 5.1 --- Joint Rate Control of Multiple VBR Videos --- p.62Chapter 5.2 --- LB Video Compression --- p.63Chapter 5.3 --- Further Study --- p.64Chapter 5.4 --- Publications --- p.65Bibliography --- p.6

Renegotiable VBR service

In this work we address the problem of supporting the QoS requirements for applications while efficiently allocating the network resources. We analyse this problem at the source node where the traffic profile is negotiated with the network and the traffic is shaped according to the contract. We advocate VBR renegotiation as an efficient mechanism to accommodate traffic fluctuations over the burst time-scale. This is in line with the Integrated Service of the IETF with the Resource reSerVation Protocol (RSVP), where the negotiated contract may be modified periodically. In this thesis, we analyse the fundamental elements needed for solving the VBR renegotiation. A source periodically estimates the needs based on: (1) its future traffic, (2) cost objective, (3) information from the past. The issues of this estimation are twofold: future traffic prediction given a prediction, the optimal change. In the case of a CBR specification the optimisation problem is trivial. But with a VBR specification this problem is complex because of the multidimensionality of the VBR traffic descriptor and the non zero condition of the system at the times where the parameter set is changed. We, therefore, focus on the problem of finding the optimal change for sources with pre-recorded or classified traffic. The prediction of the future traffic is out of the scope of this thesis. Traditional existing models are not suitable for modelling this dynamic situation because they do not take into account the non-zero conditions at the transient moments. To address the shortfalls of the traditional approaches, a new class of shapers, the time varying leaky bucket shaper class, has been introduced and characterised by network calculus. To our knowledge, this is the first model that takes into account non-zero conditions at the transient time. This innovative result forms the basis of Renegotiable VBR Service (RVBR). The application of our RVBR mathematical model to the initial problem of supporting the applications' QoS requirements while efficiently allocating the network resources results in simple, efficient algorithms. Through simulation, we first compare RVBR service versus VBR service and versus renegotiable CBR service. We show that RVBR service provides significant advantages in terms of resource costs and resource utilisation. Then, we illustrate that when the service assumes zero conditions at the transient time, the source could potentially experience losses in the case of policing because of the mismatch between the assumed bucket and buffer level and the policed bucket and buffer level. As an example of RVBR service usage, we describe the simulation of RVBR service in a scenario where a sender transmits a MPEG2 video over a network using RSVP reservation protocol with Controlled-Load service. We also describe the implementation design of a Video on Demand application, which is the first example of an RVBR-enabled application. The simulation and experimentation results lead us to believe that RVBR service provides an adequate service (in terms of QoS guaranteed and of efficient resource allocation) to sources with pre-recorded or classified traffic