SMOOTHING, STATISTICAL MULTIPLEXING, AND CALL ADMISSION CONTROL FOR STORED VIDEO

Variable bit-rate (VBR) compressed video is known to exhibit significa nt, multiple-time-scale rate variability. A number of researchers have considered transmitting stored video from a server to a client using smoothing algorithms to reduce this rate variability. These algorithms exploit client buffering capabilities and determine a ''smooth'' rate transmission schedule, while ensuring that a client buffer neither ov erflows nor underflows. In this paper, we investigate how video smooth ing impacts the statistical multiplexing gains available with such tra ffic, and we show that a significant amount of statistical multiplexin g gains can still be achieved. We then examine the implication of thes e results on network resource management and call admission control wh en transmitting smoothed stored video using VER service with statistic al quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. Specifically, we present a uni form call admission control scheme based on a Chernoff bound method th at uses a simple, novel traffic model requiring only a few parameters. This scheme provides an easy and flexible mechanism for supporting mu ltiple VER service classes with different QoS requirements. We evaluat e the efficacy of the call admission control scheme over a set of MPEG -1 coded video traces.