Principles of Performance Engineering for Telecommunication and Information Systems

The term 'teletraffic engineering' has been used since the early days of the century to describe the design of switched telecommunications networks in terms of probabilities. More recent advances in queuing theory, and the growing realisation that the basic techniques can be applied to many other aspects of system design, has led to an extension of the subject and to the term 'performance engineering'.

This book describes the basic theory of performance engineering and its application to both circuit- and packet-switched systems. For the increasing number of systems that are too complex to be analysed by theoretical methods, an introduction is given to simulation techniques. Other applications such as reliability, tolerances and the system implications of radio fading are covered, and the principles of design are discussed in terms of the basic theory.

Final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students will find the text useful in relation to a wide range of systems, as will practising telecommunication engineers. The book will also be of interest to telecommunication managers who are more interested in system performance than in detailed hardware and software design.

Mohammed Ghanbari received an MSc in Telecommunications and a Ph.D. in Electronics from the University of Essex. After almost 10 years' experience in radio and television broadcasting, he joined the Electronic Systems Engineering (ESE) Department at the University of Essex in 1986.

Charles Hughes was a deputy director of the British Telecom Laboratories until 1985 and then a professor of Telecommunications at the University of Essex until his retirement in 1993. Since then he has continued to carry out consultancy and research work, together with occasional lecturing.

Mark Sinclair received an MA in Electrical Sciences from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and an MSc in Telecommunication and Information Systems from the University of Essex. After six years working on System X at Plessey and GPT, he joined the ESE Department at the University of Essex in 1991.

Julian Eade graduated from Oxford and was awarded MSc and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics from the University of Essex. He lectured in the ESE Department at the University of Essex until 1991, when he set up his own consultancy.