Buffer contents and cell delay in a rate adaptation buffer with Markovian arrivals

This paper investigates the performance of a rate adaptation buffer in the case that the arriving cell stream is generated by an on/off-source, where both the on-periods and the off-periods are geometrically distributed. The ratio between the input rate and the output rate takes an arbitrary integer value greater than one. Under the assumption of an infinite storage capacity, exact explicit expressions are obtained for the mean values and the tail distributions of the buffer contents and the cell delay. Furthermore, an approximation is derived for the cell loss ratio in a finite-capacity buffer. Some numerical results are presented and discussed.