In packet communication systems, a header is attached to the transmitted packet at each layer. The overhead due to the transmission of the individual header can have a significant impact on the performance of the communication system especially when the system operates in heavy load. In order to increase data throughput, a number of packets sharing a single header can be aggregated into a frame.

In this paper, we present a mathematical model for a packet aggregation system assuming a general distribution for the packet length. For a given header size, we obtain the minimum system utilization where packet aggregation improves the system performance. We also analyze the asymptotic behavior of such systems leading to a simple heuristic policy on the optimum aggregation level. It is shown that the impact of the variability of the packet length distribution on different system performance measures is rather insignificant when the system load is low or moderate.

Khosrow Sohraby received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1979 and 1981, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, in 1985, all in electrical engineering.

His current research interests include design, analysis and control of high-speed computer and communications networks, traffic management and analysis, multimedia networks, networking aspects of wireless and mobile communications, analysis of algorithms, parallel processing and large-scale computations.