Modeling of H.263 encoded low bitrate video traffic for tactical video conferencing applications

Growing demand for networked video applications has led to increased interest in VBR traffic, since VBR traffic allows statistical multiplexing to conserve bandwidth. However, transporting VBR traffic poses challenges in guaranteeing QoS and efficiently utilizing resources relative to CBR traffic. Modeling VBR traffic aids in estimating QoS metrics, evaluating scheduling algorithms, and determining statistical multiplexing gains. While most VBR traffic models have focused on high-bandwidth traffic, we propose a traffic model for H.263 encoded video sequences, appropriate for low-bit-rate video. The traffic model uses a multi-state Markov chain representing a pseudo-histogram of observed bit-rates. To reduce correlation between multiplexed sequences and enhance multiplexer performance, each stream is deterministically smoothed over one frame length.