Optimal service schedule for CBR traffic in a high speed network

This paper studies the optimal service schedule of CBR traffic when the server rate is modelled according to a Markov process. The CBR traffic is mixed with traffic of another session (interfering traffic) which might be either CBR or VBR (variable bit rate) or both. The CBR traffic can suffer a maximum delay of T. The scheduler must decide which session must be scheduled for service based on future server rate, estimated from the currently available information. The objective of this paper is to find an optimal time t_s<T for switching the service from interfering traffic to CBR traffic. This switching of the scheduler from one traffic to another traffic takes into account the stochastic variation of the server rate. Three cases of variation of the source rate are considered, namely: (1) when the server rate is a constant; (2) when the server rate jumps randomly between two values; and (3) when the variation of server rate follows a diffusion process. In all three cases, this paper shows that there exists an optimal switching time t_s after which the low-priority CBR traffic can be scheduled for service. The maximum delay and the cell loss rate are determined