Analysis and efficient simulation of queueing models of telecommunications systems

Abstract

In modern packet-switched telecommunication systems, information (such as email, sound, pictures) is transported in the form of small packets (or cells) of data through a network of links and routers. The Quality of Service provided by such a network can suffer from phenomena such as loss of packets (due to buffer overflow) and excessive delays. These aspects of the system are adequately described by queueing models, so the study of such models is of great relevance for designing systems such that they provide the required QoS. This thesis contributes methods for the efficient estimation of several loss probabilities in various queueing models of communications systems. The focus is on rare-event simulation using importance sampling, but some analytical, asymptotic and numerical results are also provided