Temporal placement control of video frames in ATM networks

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new method of traffic smoothing for frames of different video sources. We assume that each video source transmits frames at fixed intervals and that the network is free to decide the relative temporal spacing of video frames from different sources. This means that the time at which a given source begins to transmit its first frame is under the control of the network; however, after that, all frames from this source are transmitted at fixed intervals. We now address two questions. What are some reasonable policies for spacing the frames of video sources? What is the performance advantage of doing this? We propose three control policies (two heuristic and one based on an optimization problem via some Fourier analysis). These are compared against the case in which the video frames from different sources are randomly distributed (i.e. no control is exercised). We show that significant performance advantages accrue if one controls the temporal placement of the video frames from different sources.