THE TIMELINESS OF ASYNCHRONOUS PACKET MULTIPLEXING IN SWITCHED ETHERNET

Abstract

Powered by single-segment switched interconnection, Ethernet can be used in time-critical data acquisition applications. Unlike synchronous time division multiple access, asynchronous packet streams result in congestions and uncertain multiplexing delays. With the delay analysis in the worst case and probabilistic guaranteeing conditions, we restrict the packet-sizes, intervals or traffic burstiness a priori to regulate delay deviations within acceptable scales. Some methods of combinatorics and stochastic theory, e.g. Cumulant Generating Function and the Large Deviation Principle, are used and verified by some simulation-based computations. The influence of time varying delay for telemetry applications is also discussed in some sense.