Optimal QoS control of interacting service stations

We consider a system of three queues and two types of packets. Each packet arriving at this system finds in front of it a controller who either sends it in the first queue or rejects it according to a QoS criterion. When the packet finishes its service in the first queue, it is probabilistically routed to one of two other parallel queues. The objective is to minimize a QoS discounted cost over an infinite horizon. The cost function is composed of a waiting cost per packet in each queue and a rejection cost in the first queue. Subsequently, we generalize this problem by considering a system of (m + 1) queues and n types of packets. We show that an optimal policy is monotonic