Network traffic prediction by a wavelet-based combined model

Network traffic prediction models can be grouped into two types, single models and combined ones. Combined models integrate several single models and thus can improve prediction accuracy. Based on wavelet transform, grey theory, and chaos theory, this paper proposes a novel combined model, wavelet–grey–chaos (WGC), for network traffic prediction. In the WGC model, we develop a time series decomposition method without the boundary problem by modifying the standard a trous algorithm, decompose the network traffic into two parts, the residual part and the burst part to alleviate the accumulated error problem, and employ the grey model GM(1,1) and chaos model to predict the residual part and the burst part respectively. Simulation results on real network traffic show that the WGC model does improve prediction accuracy.