On the propagation of self-similar traffic via a wireless gateway

Recent works have shown that high-speed wireline traffic exhibits self-similarity and burstings over a large range of time scales. Several studies in the past have hypothesized that wireless traffic is also self-similar but without adequate justification. We proposed a model for the wireless traffic that takes into account the behavior of an energy efficient gateway when fed by self-similar traffic, and also the behavior of the wireless channel. We show that under certain assumptions, the traffic that leaves the gateway will be self-similar, while in some cases the self-similarity might disappear. The analytical results are confirmed by simulations.