4,592 research outputs found
Queues with random back-offs
We consider a broad class of queueing models with random state-dependent
vacation periods, which arise in the analysis of queue-based back-off
algorithms in wireless random-access networks. In contrast to conventional
models, the vacation periods may be initiated after each service completion,
and can be randomly terminated with certain probabilities that depend on the
queue length. We examine the scaled queue length and delay in a heavy-traffic
regime, and demonstrate a sharp trichotomy, depending on how the activation
rate and vacation probability behave as function of the queue length. In
particular, the effect of the vacation periods may either (i) completely vanish
in heavy-traffic conditions, (ii) contribute an additional term to the queue
lengths and delays of similar magnitude, or even (iii) give rise to an
order-of-magnitude increase. The heavy-traffic asymptotics are obtained by
combining stochastic lower and upper bounds with exact results for some
specific cases. The heavy-traffic trichotomy provides valuable insight in the
impact of the back-off algorithms on the delay performance in wireless
random-access networks
Universality of Load Balancing Schemes on Diffusion Scale
We consider a system of parallel queues with identical exponential
service rates and a single dispatcher where tasks arrive as a Poisson process.
When a task arrives, the dispatcher always assigns it to an idle server, if
there is any, and to a server with the shortest queue among randomly
selected servers otherwise . This load balancing scheme
subsumes the so-called Join-the-Idle Queue (JIQ) policy and the
celebrated Join-the-Shortest Queue (JSQ) policy as two crucial
special cases. We develop a stochastic coupling construction to obtain the
diffusion limit of the queue process in the Halfin-Whitt heavy-traffic regime,
and establish that it does not depend on the value of , implying that
assigning tasks to idle servers is sufficient for diffusion level optimality
A common directional tuning mechanism of Drosophila motion-sensing neurons in the ON and in the OFF pathway
In the fruit fly optic lobe, T4 and T5 cells represent the first direction-selective neurons, with T4 cells responding selectively to moving brightness increments (ON) and T5 cells to brightness decrements (OFF). Both T4 and T5 cells comprise four subtypes with directional tuning to one of the four cardinal directions. We had previously found that upward-sensitive T4 cells implement both preferred direction enhancement and null direction suppression (Haag et al., 2016). Here, we asked whether this mechanism generalizes to OFF-selective T5 cells and to all four subtypes of both cell classes. We found that all four subtypes of both T4 and T5 cells implement both mechanisms, that is preferred direction enhancement and null direction inhibition, on opposing sides of their receptive fields. This gives rise to the high degree of direction selectivity observed in both T4 and T5 cells within each subpopulation
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