Analysis, Modeling and Generation of Self-Similar VBR Video Traffic.pdf

Analysis, Modeling and Generation of Self-Similar VBR Video Traffic Mark W. Garrett Walter Willinger Bellcore 445 South St. Morristown NJ 07960 Abstract We present a detailed statistical analysis of a 2-hour long em- pirical sample of VBR video. The sample was obtained by applying a simple intraframe video compression code to an action movie. The main findings of our analysis are (1) the tail behavior of the marginal bandwidth distribution can be accurately described using “heavy-tailed” distributions (e.g., Pareto); (2) the autocorrelation of the VBR video sequence decays hyperbolically (equivalent to long-range dependence) and can be modeled using self-similar processes. We com- bine our findings in a new (non-Markovian) source model for VBR video and present an algorithm for generating syn- thetic traffic. Trace-driven simulations show that statistical multiplexing results in significant bandwidth efficiency even when long-range dependence is present. Simulations of our source model show long-range dependence and heavy-tailed marginals to be important components which are not ac- counted for in currently used VBR video traffic models. 1 Introduction Packet switched communications technology has advanced sig- nificantly in the past decade, most notably in local area net- works, the Internet and ATM technology. There are two great advantages to packet switching. One is that the bandwidth of a circuit is not restricted to a small set of allowed rates. The other is the support of variable bit rate (VBR) connections, which permits efficient statistical multiplexing of bursty traffic such as computer data. Video coders are also variable rate sources; however, the traffic is generally shaped and coded to accom- modate the constant bit rate (CBR) channel of circuit-switched networks. Forcing the transmission rate to be constant results in delay, wasted bandwidth, and modulation of the video qual- ity [ORTE93]. The availability of packet networks raises the question of wh