Characterization of a CBR connection over a channel with known bounded delay variation

Asynchronous cell based transmission is the preferred transfer mode for emerging high speed network standards. The information to be transferred is organized into fixed sized cells. In this paper, we examine how to provide constant bit rate service over a channel that can be characterized by a constant transmission delay plus a variable cell access delay. To compensate for the variability in the access delay, buffers are used at the source and the destination ends of the connection. Whenever buffers overflow or underflow, the continuity of data flow over the connection breaks down. In the paper, we determine the minimum size of buffers required at the transmitter and the receiver to provide the connection. We also derive the minimum source to sink delay achievable for different buffer initialization strategies and the corresponding buffer pre-fills.