1,330 research outputs found
Modelling and Simulation of Asynchronous Real-Time Systems using Timed Rebeca
In this paper we propose an extension of the Rebeca language that can be used
to model distributed and asynchronous systems with timing constraints. We
provide the formal semantics of the language using Structural Operational
Semantics, and show its expressiveness by means of examples. We developed a
tool for automated translation from timed Rebeca to the Erlang language, which
provides a first implementation of timed Rebeca. We can use the tool to set the
parameters of timed Rebeca models, which represent the environment and
component variables, and use McErlang to run multiple simulations for different
settings. Timed Rebeca restricts the modeller to a pure asynchronous
actor-based paradigm, where the structure of the model represents the service
oriented architecture, while the computational model matches the network
infrastructure. Simulation is shown to be an effective analysis support,
specially where model checking faces almost immediate state explosion in an
asynchronous setting.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2011, arXiv:1107.584
On Synchronous and Asynchronous Monitor Instrumentation for Actor-based systems
We study the impact of synchronous and asynchronous monitoring
instrumentation on runtime overheads in the context of a runtime verification
framework for actor-based systems. We show that, in such a context,
asynchronous monitoring incurs substantially lower overhead costs. We also show
how, for certain properties that require synchronous monitoring, a hybrid
approach can be used that ensures timely violation detections for the important
events while, at the same time, incurring lower overhead costs that are closer
to those of an asynchronous instrumentation.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2014, arXiv:1502.0315
Holistic assessment of call centre performance
In modern call centres 60–70% of the operational costs come in the form of the human agents who take the calls. Ensuring that the call centre operates at lowest cost and maximum efficiency involves a trade‐off of the cost of agents against lost revenue and increased customer dissatisfaction due to lost calls. Modelling the performance characteristics of a call centre in terms of the agent queue alone misses key performance influencers, specifically the interaction between channel availability at the media gateway and the time a call is queued. A blocking probability at the media gateway, as low as 0.45%, has a significant impact on the degree of queuing observed and therefore the cost and performance of the call centre. Our analysis also shows how abandonment impacts queuing delay. However, the call centre manager has less control over this than the level of contention at the media gateway. Our commercial assessment provides an evaluation of the balance between abandonment and contention, and shows that the difference in cost between the best and worst strategy is £130K per annum, however this must be balanced against a possible additional £2.98 m exposure in lost calls if abandonment alone is used
Approximations for the Moments of Nonstationary and State Dependent Birth-Death Queues
In this paper we propose a new method for approximating the nonstationary
moment dynamics of one dimensional Markovian birth-death processes. By
expanding the transition probabilities of the Markov process in terms of
Poisson-Charlier polynomials, we are able to estimate any moment of the Markov
process even though the system of moment equations may not be closed. Using new
weighted discrete Sobolev spaces, we derive explicit error bounds of the
transition probabilities and new weak a priori estimates for approximating the
moments of the Markov processs using a truncated form of the expansion. Using
our error bounds and estimates, we are able to show that our approximations
converge to the true stochastic process as we add more terms to the expansion
and give explicit bounds on the truncation error. As a result, we are the first
paper in the queueing literature to provide error bounds and estimates on the
performance of a moment closure approximation. Lastly, we perform several
numerical experiments for some important models in the queueing theory
literature and show that our expansion techniques are accurate at estimating
the moment dynamics of these Markov process with only a few terms of the
expansion
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