Analytical Performance Evaluation of Low-Bitrate Real-Time Traffic Multiplexing in UMTS over IP Networks.

Voice and circuit switched data will be carried over IP networks in the wireline part of the future UMTS. The commonly used protocol suite for low-bitrate real-time traffic transmission in the Internet leads to large header overhead, i.e., to low utilization of the network resources by user data. Multiplexing packets of different flows into a single IP packet reduces this effect. We model packet tunneling and multiplexing with subsequent spacing in IP networks. We derive a discrete-time analysis based on a framework for solving Markov chains. The numerical results show the superiority of multiplexing schemes provided that parameters are set in an appropriate way since there are many performance tradeoffs that have substantial effect on the efficiency of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]