A transient analysis of polling systems operating under exponential time-limited service disciplines

In the present article, we analyze a class of time-limited polling systems. In particular, we will derive a direct relation for the evolution of the joint queue-length during the course of a server visit. This will be done both for the pure and the exhaustive exponential time-limited discipline for general service time requirements and preemptive service. More specifically, service of individual customers is according to the preemptive-repeat-random strategy, i.e., if a service is interrupted, then at the next server visit a new service time will be drawn from the original service-time distribution. Moreover, we incorporate customer routing in our analysis, such that it may be applied to a large variety of queueing networks with a single server operating under one of the before-mentioned time-limited service disciplines. We study the time-limited disciplines by performing a transient analysis for the queue length at the served queue. The analysis of the pure time-limited discipline builds on several known results for the transient analysis of the M/G/1 queue. Besides, for the analysis of the exhaustive discipline, we will derive several new results for the transient analysis of an M/G/1 during a busy period. The final expressions (both for the exhaustive and pure case) that we obtain for the key relations generalize previous results by incorporating customer routing or by relaxing the exponentiality assumption on the service times. Finally, based on the interpretation of these key relations, we formulate a conjecture for the key relation for any branching-type service discipline operating under an exponential time-limit

An O(nlogn) algorithm for the two-machine flow shop problem with controllable machine speeds

Production Planning;Scheduling;produktieleer/ produktieplanning

Monotonicity and stability of periodic polling models

Polling Systems;Stability;operations research

Hierarchical trade and downstream information

Economics;econometrics

Cores and related solution concepts for multi-choice games

Game Theory;Bargaining;econometrics

Opinion polls, political elites and party competition in postcommunist Bulgaria

Opinion polls have taken a high-profile role in political affairs in East European countries over the course of the past decade. Policy-makers, politicians and political parties made much use of polls in the early years of democratic transition, although for various reasons they were received with significant scepticism by each of these users and by citizens alike. In the post-communist era, as revealed in recent studies and interviews conducted among the Bulgarian elite, significant use of opinion polls has been made by political parties anxious to bolster their own position and undermine that of their rivals. Sometimes there has been real collusion between parties, pollsters and journalists, implying that the public is correct to be sceptical. Polls therefore perform the role of enhancing the position of politicians, as identified by Schumpeter, rather than contributing to the empowerment of the population, as envisaged by Gallup

Optimization of polling systems with Bernoulli schedules

Optimization;Polling Systems;Queueing Theory;operations research

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume V, Issue 6

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy