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.