Approximating the heterogeneous fluid queue with a birth-death fluid queue

Recent research has shown that fluid-flow queueing models accurately determine the burst level component of the ATM multiplexer process, and fluid models therefore constitute an efficient tool for the investigation of admission control in ATM networks. This article first gives a review of Markov-driven fluid queues with special attention given to the heterogeneous on/off model. Then an approximation procedure in which the original heterogeneous arrival process is replaced by a homogeneous birth-death arrival process is presented. The substitution is based on matching statistical parameters. Finally, the approach is evaluated by numerical examples