High-speed transmission over contemporary communication networks has drawn many research efforts. Traffic scheduling schemes which play a critical role in managing network transmission have been pervasively studied and widely implemented in various practical communication networks. In a sophisticated communication system, a variety of applications co-exist and require differentiated Quality-of-Service (QoS). Innovative scheduling schemes and hybrid scheduling disciplines which integrate multiple traditional scheduling mechanisms have emerged for QoS differentiation. This study aims to develop novel analytical models for commonly interested scheduling schemes in communication systems under more realistic network traffic and use the models to investigate the issues of design and development of traffic scheduling schemes. In the open literature, it is commonly recognized that network traffic exhibits self-similar nature, which has serious impact on the performance of communication networks and protocols. To have a deep study of self-similar traffic, the real-world traffic datasets are measured and evaluated in this study. The results reveal that selfsimilar traffic is a ubiquitous phenomenon in high-speed communication networks and highlight the importance of the developed analytical models under self-similar traffic. The original analytical models are then developed for the centralized scheduling schemes including the Deficit Round Robin, the hybrid PQGPS which integrates the traditional Priority Queueing (PQ) and Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) schemes, and the Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) forward error control discipline in the presence of self-similar traffic. Most recently, research on the innovative Cognitive Radio (CR) techniques in wireless networks is popular. However, most of the existing analytical models still employ the traditional Poisson traffic to examine the performance of CR involved systems. In addition, few studies have been reported for estimating the residual service left by primary users. Instead, extensive existing studies use an ON/OFF source to model the residual service regardless of the primary traffic. In this thesis, a PQ theory is adopted to investigate and model the possible service left by selfsimilar primary traffic and derive the queue length distribution of individual secondary users under the distributed spectrum random access protocol.

High-speed transmission over contemporary communication networks has drawn many research efforts. Traffic scheduling schemes which play a critical role in managing network transmission have been pervasively studied and widely implemented in various practical communication networks. In a sophisticated communication system, a variety of applications co-exist and require differentiated Quality-of-Service (QoS). Innovative scheduling schemes and hybrid scheduling disciplines which integrate multiple traditional scheduling mechanisms have emerged for QoS differentiation. This study aims to develop novel analytical models for commonly interested scheduling schemes in communication systems under more realistic network traffic and use the models to investigate the issues of design and development of traffic scheduling schemes. In the open literature, it is commonly recognized that network traffic exhibits self-similar nature, which has serious impact on the performance of communication networks and protocols. To have a deep study of self-similar traffic, the real-world traffic datasets are measured and evaluated in this study. The results reveal that selfsimilar traffic is a ubiquitous phenomenon in high-speed communication networks and highlight the importance of the developed analytical models under self-similar traffic. The original analytical models are then developed for the centralized scheduling schemes including the Deficit Round Robin, the hybrid PQGPS which integrates the traditional Priority Queueing (PQ) and Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) schemes, and the Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) forward error control discipline in the presence of self-similar traffic. Most recently, research on the innovative Cognitive Radio (CR) techniques in wireless networks is popular. However, most of the existing analytical models still employ the traditional Poisson traffic to examine the performance of CR involved systems. In addition, few studies have been reported for estimating the residual service left by primary users. Instead, extensive existing studies use an ON/OFF source to model the residual service regardless of the primary traffic. In this thesis, a PQ theory is adopted to investigate and model the possible service left by selfsimilar primary traffic and derive the queue length distribution of individual secondary users under the distributed spectrum random access protocol.