2,459 research outputs found
Diffusion models and steady-state approximations for exponentially ergodic Markovian queues
Motivated by queues with many servers, we study Brownian steady-state
approximations for continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs). Our approximations
are based on diffusion models (rather than a diffusion limit) whose
steady-state, we prove, approximates that of the Markov chain with notable
precision. Strong approximations provide such "limitless" approximations for
process dynamics. Our focus here is on steady-state distributions, and the
diffusion model that we propose is tractable relative to strong approximations.
Within an asymptotic framework, in which a scale parameter is taken large,
a uniform (in the scale parameter) Lyapunov condition imposed on the sequence
of diffusion models guarantees that the gap between the steady-state moments of
the diffusion and those of the properly centered and scaled CTMCs shrinks at a
rate of . Our proofs build on gradient estimates for solutions of the
Poisson equations associated with the (sequence of) diffusion models and on
elementary martingale arguments. As a by-product of our analysis, we explore
connections between Lyapunov functions for the fluid model, the diffusion model
and the CTMC.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AAP984 the Annals of
Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Coupled queues with customer impatience
Motivated by assembly processes, we consider a Markovian queueing system with multiple coupled queues and customer impatience. Coupling means that departures from all constituent queues are synchronised and that service is interrupted whenever any of the queues is empty and only resumes when all queues are non-empty again. Even under Markovian assumptions, the state space grows exponentially with the number of queues involved. To cope with this inherent state space explosion problem, we investigate performance by means of two numerical approximation techniques based on series expansions, as well as by deriving the fluid limit. In addition, we provide closed-form expressions for the first terms in the series expansion of the mean queue content for the symmetric coupled queueing system. By an extensive set of numerical experiments, we show that the approximation methods complement each other, each one being accurate in a particular subset of the parameter space. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Large deviations analysis for the queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime
We consider the FCFS queue in the Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic
regime. It is known that the normalized sequence of steady-state queue length
distributions is tight and converges weakly to a limiting random variable W.
However, those works only describe W implicitly as the invariant measure of a
complicated diffusion. Although it was proven by Gamarnik and Stolyar that the
tail of W is sub-Gaussian, the actual value of was left open. In subsequent work, Dai and He
conjectured an explicit form for this exponent, which was insensitive to the
higher moments of the service distribution.
We explicitly compute the true large deviations exponent for W when the
abandonment rate is less than the minimum service rate, the first such result
for non-Markovian queues with abandonments. Interestingly, our results resolve
the conjecture of Dai and He in the negative. Our main approach is to extend
the stochastic comparison framework of Gamarnik and Goldberg to the setting of
abandonments, requiring several novel and non-trivial contributions. Our
approach sheds light on several novel ways to think about multi-server queues
with abandonments in the Halfin-Whitt regime, which should hold in considerable
generality and provide new tools for analyzing these systems
A Fixed-Point Algorithm for Closed Queueing Networks
In this paper we propose a new efficient iterative scheme for solving closed queueing networks with phase-type service time distributions. The method is especially efficient and accurate in case of large numbers of nodes and large customer populations. We present the method, put it in perspective, and validate it through a large number of test scenarios. In most cases, the method provides accuracies within 5% relative error (in comparison to discrete-event simulation)
Simple and explicit bounds for multi-server queues with (and sometimes better) scaling
We consider the FCFS queue, and prove the first simple and explicit
bounds that scale as (and sometimes better). Here
denotes the corresponding traffic intensity. Conceptually, our results can be
viewed as a multi-server analogue of Kingman's bound. Our main results are
bounds for the tail of the steady-state queue length and the steady-state
probability of delay. The strength of our bounds (e.g. in the form of tail
decay rate) is a function of how many moments of the inter-arrival and service
distributions are assumed finite. More formally, suppose that the inter-arrival
and service times (distributed as random variables and respectively)
have finite th moment for some Let (respectively )
denote (respectively ). Then
our bounds (also for higher moments) are simple and explicit functions of
, and
only. Our bounds scale gracefully even when the number of
servers grows large and the traffic intensity converges to unity
simultaneously, as in the Halfin-Whitt scaling regime. Some of our bounds scale
better than in certain asymptotic regimes. More precisely,
they scale as multiplied by an inverse polynomial in These results formalize the intuition that bounds should be tighter
in light traffic as well as certain heavy-traffic regimes (e.g. with
fixed and large). In these same asymptotic regimes we also prove bounds for
the tail of the steady-state number in service.
Our main proofs proceed by explicitly analyzing the bounding process which
arises in the stochastic comparison bounds of amarnik and Goldberg for
multi-server queues. Along the way we derive several novel results for suprema
of random walks and pooled renewal processes which may be of independent
interest. We also prove several additional bounds using drift arguments (which
have much smaller pre-factors), and make several conjectures which would imply
further related bounds and generalizations
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