A simulation model of correlated traffic sources based on random repetition of random variables

Simulation of a multimedia communication system often needs the generation of large sequences of random numbers, which have certain amplitude distribu tions and correlation among the values. For example, to design a multimedia system by simulation and evaluate its performance, the information stream generated by a traffic source has to be modeled by correlated random sequen ces, as the main characteristics of multimedia information streams are rela ted to synchronization, that is, to the presence of relationships between t he information units which make up the multimedia stream. This paper presen ts a method which allows easy and fast generation of correlated random sequ ences. The correlation among the generated values is obtained by random rep etition of random variables, according to probability distributions which a re derived from empirical histograms of the amplitude distribution and corr elation among the values of the traffic source we intend to model by simula tion.