Network Calculus Theory and Application: A New Graduate Course for Engineering Students

Abstract

With the development of modern networks, the quality of service guarantee has become even more important than before. However, various new types of traffic and heterogeneous network architecture make it quite challenging to evaluate the quality of service, such as delay and reliability. Therefore, a novel analysis method is needed to solve this situation. Network calculus is a theory used to analyze the queueing problems in networks, which is the main content to be taught in this graduate course. Before network calculus theory is introduced, the classical queueing theory will be taught. Then, the mathematical fundamentals of network calculus, such as min-plus algebra and cumulative arrival/service process, will be introduced. Next, two branches of network calculus, i.e., deterministic network calculus and stochastic network calculus, will be introduced separately, including the definition of deterministic/stochastic arrival curve and service curve, as well as important theorems, such as delay theorem, flow aggregation theorem, server concatenation theorem. After the theoretical knowledge, practical content will be taught in two parts. First, students are encouraged to establish system models based on their graduate research topics, analyze the service guarantee of their models, and present their work in class. Second, a traffic data collection platform will be taught, and students will collect various traffic data and analyze traffic characteristics based on network calculus theory. Based on the feedback from students during the past three years, students are satisfied with this new course because it focuses on frontier technology and the teaching activities are well-organized.