Traffic-Flow Analysis for Fast Performance Estimation of Communication Systems

Simulation is a widely used method for the performance analysis Jain, 1991 of communication systems. There is a large number of various methods used to describe the behaviour of complex systems. Banks et al., 1996; Bratley et al., 1986; Jávor, 1985; Jávor, 1993 The simulation of large and complex systems requires a large amount of memory and computing power that is often available only on a supercomputer. Efforts are made to use multiprocessor systems or clusters of workstations. The conventional synchronisation methods for parallel simulation e.g., conservative, optimistic Fujimoto, 1990 use event-by-event synchronisation and they are unfortunately not applicable to all cases, or do not provide the desirable speedup. The conservative method is efficient only if certain strict conditions are met. The most popular optimistic method “Time Warp” Jefferson et al., 1987 often produces excessive rollbacks and inter-processor communication. The Statistical Synchronisation Method proposed by Pongor Pongor, 1992 does not exchange individual messages between the segments but rather the statistical characteristics of the message flow. The method can produce excellent speed-up Lencse, 1998a but has a limited area of application Lencse, 1999 .