QoE-based CATV network capacity planning and upgrade system
AssigneeARRIS Enterprises LLC
InventorsThomas J. Cloonan, Ruth Cloonan, Santhana Chari, John Ulm, Michael J. Emmendorfer, Benjamin Widrevitz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods for analyzing network parameters in a data communications network so as to maintain a desired Quality of Experience (QoE) of at least one subscriber.
Claims14
An apparatus that distributes content to a plurality of groups of customers over a distribution network, each group of customers having an associated time varying bandwidth demand on said device, said apparatus comprising:
- at least one measurement instrument capable of monitoring respective packets of data associated with each of said plurality of groups of customers, to sample said time-varying bandwidth demand for each said group of customers as said packets of data pass through said device;
- and
- a processor that uses samples received from said at least one measurement instrument to construct at least one probability distribution function associated with a one of said plurality of groups of customers, the probability distribution function measuring the relative likelihood that said one of said plurality of groups of customers' demands bandwidth at each of a range of bandwidth values;
- where the samples used by the processor are measured over an interval no longer than approximately one second, and are used to construct a first probability distribution function associated with a present time, and a second probability distribution function associated with a future time.
A method for automatically generating a probability distribution function measuring the relative likelihood that one of a plurality of groups of customers in a distribution network instantaneously demands bandwidth, from a distribution device, at each of a range of bandwidth values, the method comprising:
- sampling packets of data passing through said distribution device to measure a time varying bandwidth usage for each of a plurality of customers;
- grouping said plurality of customers into respective ones of said plurality of groups of customers;
- automatically calculating a super-set of average bandwidth samples for each one of said plurality of groups of customers;
- automatically creating a relative frequency histogram using the super-set of average bandwidth samples;
- and
- automatically creating the probability distribution function using the relative frequency histogram;
- where the method also includes the steps of:
- creating an individual probability distribution function for each subscriber in a respective one of said plurality of groups of customers;
- and
- convolving the individual distribution functions together to create an aggregate probability distribution function for the respective one of said plurality of groups of customers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.