An interpolation approximation for the GI/G/1 queue based on multipoint Padé approximation

The performance evaluation of many complex manufacturing, communication and computer systems has been made possible by modeling them as queueing systems. Many approximations used in queueing theory have been drawn from the behavior of queues in light and heavy traffic conditions. In this paper, we propose a new approximation technique, which combines the light and heavy traffic characteristics. This interpolation approximation is based on the theory of multipoint Padé approximation which is applied at two points: light and heavy traffic. We show how this can be applied for estimating the waiting time moments of the ^GI/G/1 queue. The light traffic derivatives of any order can be evaluated using the MacLaurin series analysis procedure. The heavy traffic limits of the ^GI/G/1 queue are well known in the literature. Our technique generalizes the previously developed interpolation approximations and can be used to approximate any order of the waiting time moments. Through numerical examples, we show that the moments of the steady state waiting time can be estimated with extremely high accuracy under all ranges of traffic intensities using low orders of the approximant. We also present a framework for the development of simple analytical approximation formulas. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

New bounds for expected delay in FIFO M/G/c queues

Most bounds for expected delay, E[D], in GI/GI/c queues are modifications of bounds for the GI/GI/1 case. In this paper we exploit a new delay recursion for the GI/GI/c queue to produce bounds of a different sort when the traffic intensity p = λ/μ = E[S]/E[T] is less than the integer portion of the number of servers divided by two. (S AND T denote generic service and interarrival times, respectively.) We derive two different families of new bounds for expected delay, both in terms of moments of S AND T. Our first bound is applicable when E[S₂] < ∞. Our second bound for the first time does not require finite variance of S; it only involves terms of the form E[S^β], where 1 < β < 2. We conclude by comparing our bounds to the best known bound of this type, as well as values obtained from simulation. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Delay moments for FIFO GI/GI/s queues

For stable FIFO GI/GI/s queues, s ≥ 2, we show that finite (k+1)st moment of service time, S, is not in general necessary for finite kth moment of steady-state customer delay, D, thus weakening some classical conditions of Kiefer and Wolfowitz (1956). Further, we demonstrate that the conditions required for E[D ^k]<∞ are closely related to the magnitude of traffic intensity ρ (defined to be the ratio of the expected service time to the expected interarrival time). In particular, if ρ is less than the integer part of s/2, then E[D] < ∞ if E[S^3/2]<∞, and E[D^k]<∞ if E[S^k]<∞, ^k≥ 2. On the other hand, if s-1 < ρ < s, then E[D^k]<∞ if and only if E[S^k+1]<∞, k ≥ 1. Our method of proof involves three key elements: a novel recursion for delay which reduces the problem to that of a reflected random walk with dependent increments, a new theorem for proving the existence of finite moments of the steady-state distribution of reflected random walks with stationary increments, and use of the classic Kiefer and Wolfowitz conditions. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A matrix-analytic solution for the DBMAP/PH/1 priority queue

Priority queueing models have been commonly used in telecommunication systems. The development of analytically tractable models to determine their performance is vitally important. The discrete time batch Markovian arrival process (DBMAP) has been widely used to model the source behavior of data traffic, while phase-type (PH) distribution has been extensively applied to model the service time. This paper focuses on the computation of the DBMAP/PH/1 queueing system with priorities, in which the arrival process is considered to be a DBMAP with two priority levels and the service time obeys a discrete PH distribution. Such a queueing model has potential in performance evaluation of computer networks such as video transmission over wireless networks and priority scheduling in ATM or TDMA networks. Based on matrix-analytic methods, we develop computation algorithms for obtaining the stationary distribution of the system numbers and further deriving the key performance indices of the DBMAP/PH/1 priority queue. AMS subject classifications: 60K25 · 90B22 · 68M20 The work was supported in part by grants from RGC under the contracts HKUST6104/04E, HKUST6275/04E and HKUST6165/05E, a grant from NSFC/RGC under the contract N_HKUST605/02, a grant from NSF China under the contract 60429202.     

Approximating the Mean Waiting Time in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">GI/G/s</Emphasis> Queue

We provide two distribution-dependent approximations for the mean waiting time in a GI/G/s queue. Both approximations are weighted combinations of the exact mean waiting times for the GI/M/s and M/D/s queues each of which has the same mean service time and traffic intensity as in the approximating GI/G/s queue. The weights in the approximations are expressed by the service-time c.d.f. and the first two moments of interarrival and service times. To examine the performance of our approximations, they are numerically compared with exact solutions and previous two-moment approximations for various cases. Extensive numerical comparisons indicate that the relative percentage errors of the approximations are of the order of 5% in moderate traffic and 1% in heavy traffic, except for extreme cases.     

Performance analysis of a slotted-ALOHA protocol on a capture channel with fading

We consider the slotted ALOHA protocol on a channel with a capture effect. There are M < users each with an infinite buffer. If in a slot, i packets are transmitted, then the probability of a successful reception of a packet is q _i. This model contains the CDMA protocols as special cases. We obtain sufficient rate conditions, which are close to necessary for stability of the system, when the arrival streams are stationary ergodic. Under the same rate conditions, for general regenerative arrival streams, we obtain the rates of convergence to stationarity, finiteness of stationary moments and various functional limit theorems. Our arrival streams contain all the traffic models suggested in the recent literature, including the ones which display long range dependence. We also obtain bounds on the stationary moments of waiting times which can be tight under realistic conditions. Finally, we obtain several results on the transient performance of the system, e.g., first time to overflow and the limits of the overflow process. We also extend the above results to the case of a capture channel exhibiting Markov modulated fading. Most of our results and proofs will be shown to hold also for the slotted ALOHA protocol without capture.     

Sojourn time asymptotics in the M/G/1 processor sharing queue

We show for the M/G/1 processor sharing queue that the service time distribution is regularly varying of index -ν, ν non-integer, iff the sojourn time distribution is regularly varying of index -ν. This result is derived from a new expression for the Laplace–Stieltjes transform of the sojourn time distribution. That expression also leads to other new properties for the sojourn time distribution. We show how the moments of the sojourn time can be calculated recursively and prove that the kth moment of the sojourn time is finite iff the kth moment of the service time is finite. In addition, we give a short proof of a heavy traffic theorem for the sojourn time distribution, prove a heavy traffic theorem for the moments of the sojourn time, and study the properties of the heavy traffic limiting sojourn time distribution when the service time distribution is regularly varying. Explicit formulas and multiterm expansions are provided for the case that the service time has a Pareto distribution. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The conditional sojourn time distribution in the GI/M/1 processor-sharing queue in heavy traffic

We treat the GI/M/1 queue with a processor-sharing server, in the heavy traffic case. Using perturbation methods, we construct asymptotic expansions for the conditional sojourn time distribution of a tagged customer conditioned on the tagged customer's service time. The resulting approximation is simple in form and involves only the first three moments of the interarrival time distribution.     

Asymptotic Results and a Markovian Approximation for the M(n)/M(n)/s+GI System

In this paper for the M(n)/M(n)/s+GI system, i.e. for a s-server queueing system where the calls in the queue may leave the system due to impatience, we present new asymptotic results for the intensities of calls leaving the system due to impatience and a Markovian system approximation where these results are applied. Furthermore, we present a new proof for the formulae of the conditional density of the virtual waiting time distributions, recently given by Movaghar for the less general M(n)/M/s+GI system. Also we obtain new explicit expressions for refined virtual waiting time characteristics as a byproduct.     

A new proof of finite moment conditions for GI/G/1 busy periods

A generalization of the GI/G/1 queue is considered where the service time of the nth customer and the inter-arrival time between arrivalsn andn+1 may be dependent random variables. New proofs are obtained of finite moment conditions for busy periods and the ladder epochs of a corresponding random walk. The method of proof, which is much different from the usual ones, directly relates busy period moments to virtual and actual delay moments.     

On the complete monotonicity of the waiting time density in some GI/G/k systems

In this note the complete monotonicity of the waiting time density in GI/G/k queues is proved under the assumption that the service time density is completely monotone. This is an extension of Keilson's [3] result for M/G/1 queues. We also provide another proof of the result that complete monotonicity is preserved by geometric compounding.     

AnM/M/s-consistent diffusion model for theGI/G/s queue

This paper develops a diffusion-approximation model for a stableGI/G/s queue: The queue-length process in theGI/G/s queue is approximated by a diffusion process on the nonnegative real line. Some heuristics on the state space and the infinitesimal parameters of the approximating diffusion process are introduced to obtain an approximation formula for the steady-state queue-length distribution. It is shown that the formula is consistent with the exact results for theM/M/s andM/G/ queues. The accuracy of the approximations for principal congestion measures are numerically examined for some particular cases.     

Models and Approximations for Call Center Design

A call center is a facility for delivering telephone service, both incoming and outgoing. This paper addresses optimal staffing of call centers, modeled as M/G/n queues whose offered traffic consists of multiple customer streams, each with an individual priority, arrival rate, service distribution and grade of service (GoS) stated in terms of equilibrium tail waiting time probabilities or mean waiting times. The paper proposes a methodology for deriving the approximate minimal number of servers that suffices to guarantee the prescribed GoS of all customer streams. The methodology is based on an analytic approximation, called the Scaling-Erlang (SE) approximation, which maps the M/G/n queue to an approximating, suitably scaled M/G/1 queue, for which waiting time statistics are available via the Pollaczek-Khintchine formula in terms of Laplace transforms. The SE approximation is then generalized to M/G/n queues with multiple types of customers and non-preemptive priorities, yielding the Priority Scaling-Erlang (PSE) approximation. A simple goal-seeking search, utilizing SE/PSE approximations, is presented for the optimal staffing level, subject to GoS constraints. The efficacy of the methodology is demonstrated by comparing the number of servers estimated via the PSE approximation to their counterparts obtained by simulation. A number of case studies confirm that the SE/PSE approximations yield optimal staffing results in excellent agreement with simulation, but at a fraction of simulation time and space.     

State-dependent routing on symmetric loss networks with trunk reservations. II: Asymptotics,optimal design

We investigate a distributed, state-dependent, dynamic routing strategy for circuit-switched loss networks which we have called Aggregated-Least-Busy-Alternative (ALBA). The networks considered are symmetric and fully connected, the offered calls form Poisson streams and routes have at most two links. In ALBA(K), the states of each link are lumped intoK (K 2) aggregates and the route of each call is determined by local information on the aggregate-states of the links of the alternate routes. The last aggregate is always the set of states reserved for direct traffic and defined by the trunk reservation parameter. The particular case of ALBA in which there is no aggregation is Least-Busy-Alternative (LBA); ALBA(2) represents the other extreme of aggregation. We consider two separate asymptotic scalings based on Fixed Point Models for ALBA(K) which were obtained and investigated in an earlier paper. In the first, it is assumed that the number of network nodes, the offered traffic and trunk group size are all large; their ratios have been chosen to reflect practical interest. The results show that there exists a threshold which delineates fundamentally different behavior: for offered traffic below the threshold, the network loss probability decreases exponentially with increasing network size, while above the threshold the decrease is only polynomial. In the related second asymptotic scaling, the asymptotically optimum trunk reservation parameter is obtained as the solution of a simple equation. Such asymptotically optimal designs are compared to the outputs of exhaustive numerical searches for some realistically sized networks and found to perform very well.Dr. Gibbens' work was done while visiting AT&T Bell Laboratories. His present address: Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1SB, UK.     

路段容量约束弹性需求交通均衡分配近似算法

本文研究了带路段容量约束弹性需求用户均衡交通分配问题及其近似解法.采用超需求模型将弹性需求转化为固定需求,提出了一种带路段容量约束弹性需求用户均衡交通分配近似算法.该算法在迭代过程中,通过不断自适应调节排队延误因子、误差因子来近似真实路段行驶时间,使路段流量逐步满足约束条件,最终达到广义用户均衡.这种方法克服了容量约束弹性需求用户均衡分配计算量大及随机分配法要求枚举所有路径的困难.随后证明了算法的收敛性,并对一个小型路网进行了数值试验.     

Stability and performance analysis of rate-based feedback flow controlled ATM networks

Motivated by ABR class of service in ATM networks, we study a continuous time queueing system with a feedback control of the arrival rate of some of the sources. The feedback about the queue length or the total workload is provided at regular intervals (variations on it, especially the traffic management specification TM 4.0, are also considered). The propagation delays can be nonnegligible. For a general class of feedback algorithms, we obtain the stability of the system in the presence of one or more bottleneck nodes in the virtual circuit. Our system is general enough that it can be useful to study feedback control in other network protocols. We also obtain rates of convergence to the stationary distributions and finiteness of moments. For the single botterneck case, we provide algorithms to compute the stationary distributions and the moments of the sojourn times in different sets of states. We also show analytically (by showing continuity of stationary distributions and moments) that for small propagation delays, we can provide feedback algorithms which have higher mean throughput, lower probability of overflow and lower delay jitter than any open loop policy. Finally these results are supplemented by some computational results. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Some limit theorems for regenerative queues

We consider a single server queue with the interarrival times and the service times forming a regenerative sequence. This traffic class includes the standard models: iid, periodic, Markov modulated (e.g., BMAP model of Lucantoni [18]) and their superpositions. This class also includes the recently proposed traffic models in high speed networks, exhibiting long range dependence. Under minimal conditions we obtain the rates of convergence to stationary distributions, finiteness of stationary moments, various functional limit theorems and the continuity of stationary distributions and moments. We use the continuity results to obtain approximations for stationary distributions and moments of an MMPP/GI/1 queue where the modulating chain has a countable state space. We extend all our results to feed-forward networks where the external arrivals to each queue can be regenerative. In the end we show that the output process of a leaky bucket is regenerative if the input process is and hence our results extend to a queue with arrivals controlled by a leaky bucket. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Algorithmic approximations for the busy period distribution of the M/M/c retrial queue

In this paper we deal with the main multiserver retrial queue of M/M/c type with exponential repeated attempts. This model is known to be analytically intractable due to the spatial heterogeneity of the underlying Markov chain, caused by the retrial feature. For this reason several models have been proposed for approximating its stationary distribution, that lead to satisfactory numerical implementations. This paper extends these studies by developing efficient algorithmic procedures for calculating the busy period distribution of the main approximation models of Wilkinson [Wilkinson, R.I., 1956. Theories for toll traffic engineering in the USA, The Bell System Technical Journal 35, 421–514], Falin [Falin, G.I., 1983. Calculations of probability characteristics of a multiline system with repeated calls, Moscow University Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics 1, 43–49] and Neuts and Rao [Neuts, M.F., Rao, B.M., 1990. Numerical investigation of a multiserver retrial model, Queueing Systems 7, 169–190]. Moreover, we develop stable recursive schemes for the computation of the busy period moments. The corresponding distributions for the total number of customers served during a busy period are also studied. Several numerical results illustrate the efficiency of the methods and reveal interesting facts concerning the behavior of the M/M/c retrial queue.     

Further delay moment results for FIFO multiserver queues

Using a new family of service disciplines, we provide weaker sufficient conditions for finite stationary delay moments in FIFO multiserver queues. This extends the work in Sigman and Scheller-Wolf [6] to GI/GI/s queues with = E[S]/E[T] s-1 are the familiar Kiefer and Wolfowitz conditions actually known to be necessary. For the case when < 1, we provide sufficient conditions for finite mean stationary delay, expressed as a function of the number of servers in the system. The limit of these conditions as s is the requirement that E[S] < , which is the condition for finite mean stationary delay in a FIFO GI/GI/ queue. Both of these results highlight the interplay between traffic intensity and service time distribution in determining the behavior of delay moments in multiserver queues.