We study many-server queues with abandonment in which customers have general service and patience time distributions. The dynamics of the system are modeled using measure- valued processes, to keep track of the residual service and patience times of each customer. Deterministic fluid models are established to provide first-order approximation for this model. The fluid model solution, which is proved to uniquely exists, serves as the fluid limit of the many-server queue, as the number of servers becomes large. Based on the fluid model solution, first-order approximations for various performance quantities are proposed.
We consider GI/Ph/n+M parallel-server systems with a renewal arrival process, a phase-type service time distribution, n homogenous servers, and an exponential patience time distribution with positive rate. We show that in the Halfin-Whitt regime, the sequence of stationary distributions corresponding to the normalized state processes is tight. As a consequence, we establish an interchange of heavy traffic and steady state limits for GI/Ph/n+M queues.
In this paper, we consider modeling time-dependent multi-server queues that include abandonments and retrials. For the performance analysis of those, fluid and diffusion models called "strong approximations" have been widely used in the literature. Although they are proven to be asymptotically exact, their effectiveness as approximations in critically loaded regimes needs to be investigated. To that end, we find that existing fluid and diffusion approximations might be either inaccurate under simplifying assumptions or computationally intractable. To address that concern, this paper focuses on…
We consider an M/G/1 queue in which the customers, while waiting in line, may renege from it. We study the Nash equilibrium profile among customers, and show that it is defined by two sequences of thresholds. For each customer, the decision is based on the observed past (which determines from what sequence the threshold is taken), and the observed queue length (which determines the appropriate element in the chosen sequence). We construct the a of equations that has the Nash equilibrium as its solution, and discuss the relationships between the properties of the service time distribution and t…
We establish heavy-traffic stochastic-process limits for waiting times in many-server queues with customer abandonment. If the system is asymptotically critically loaded, as in the quality-and-efficiency-driven (QED) regime, then a bounding argument shows that the abandonment does not affect waiting-time processes. If instead the system is overloaded, as in the efficiency-driven (ED) regime, following Mandelbaum et al. [Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing (1999) 1095--1104], we treat customer abandonment by studying the limiting …
Fluid models have become an important tool for the study of many-server queues with general service and patience time distributions. The equilibrium state of a fluid model has been revealed by Whitt (2006) and shown to yield reasonable approximations to the steady state of the original stochastic systems. However, it remains an open question whether the solution to a fluid model converges to the equilibrium state and under what condition. We show in this paper that the convergence holds under a mild condition. Our method builds on the framework of measure-valued processes developed in Zhang (2…
We use multidimensional diffusion processes to approximate the dynamics of a queue served by many parallel servers. The queue is served in the first-in-first-out (FIFO) order and the customers waiting in queue may abandon the system without service. Two diffusion models are proposed in this paper. They differ in how the patience time distribution is built into them. The first diffusion model uses the patience time density at zero and the second one uses the entire patience time distribution. To analyze these diffusion models, we develop a numerical algorithm for computing the stationary distri…
We consider an overloaded multiclass nonidling first-in-first-out single-server queue with abandonment. The interarrival times, service times, and deadline times are sequences of independent and identically, but generally distributed random variables. In prior work, Jennings and Reed studied the workload process associated with this queue. Under mild conditions, they establish both a functional law of large numbers and a functional central limit theorem for this process. We build on that work here. For this, we consider a more detailed description of the system state given by $K$ finite, nonne…
We use an Ornstein--Uhlenbeck (OU) process to approximate the queue length process in a $GI/GI/n+M$ queue. This one-dimensional diffusion model is able to produce accurate performance estimates in two overloaded regimes: In the first regime, the number of servers is large and the mean patience time is comparable to or longer than the mean service time; in the second regime, the number of servers can be arbitrary but the mean patience time is much longer than the mean service time. Using the diffusion model, we obtain Gaussian approximations for the steady-state queue length and the steady-stat…
We consider the FCFS $M/H_2/n + M$ 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 $\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}x^{-2}\log(P(W >x))$ was left open. In subsequent work, Dai and He conjectured an explicit form for this exponent, which was insensitive t…
A many-server queueing system is considered in which customers arrive according to a renewal process and have service and patience times that are drawn from two independent sequences of independent, identically distributed random variables. Customers enter service in the order of arrival and are assumed to abandon the queue if the waiting time in queue exceeds the patience time. The state of the system with $N$ servers is represented by a four-component process that consists of the forward recurrence time of the arrival process, a pair of measure-valued processes, one that keeps track of the w…
We propose a unified approach to establishing diffusion approximations for queues with impatient customers within a general framework of scaling customer patience time. The approach consists of two steps. The first step is to show that the diffusion-scaled abandonment process is asymptotically close to a function of the diffusion-scaled queue length process under appropriate conditions. The second step is to construct a continuous mapping not only to characterize the system dynamics using the system primitives, but also to help verify the conditions needed in the first step. The diffusion appr…
The Erlang A model--an M/M/s queue with exponential abandonment--is often used to represent a service system with impatient customers. For this system, the popular square-root staffing rule determines the necessary staffing level to achieve the desirable QED (quality-and-efficiency-driven) service regime; however, the rule also implies that properties of large systems are highly sensitive to parameters. We reveal that the origin of this high sensitivity is due to the operation of large systems at a point of singularity in a phase diagram of service regimes. We can avoid this singularity by imp…
In this thesis, we study the queueing systems with heterogeneous servers and service rate uncertainty under the Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic regime. First, we analyse many server queues with abandonments when service rates are i.i.d. random variables. We derive a diffusion approximation using a novel method. The diffusion has a random drift, and hence depending on the realisations of service rates, the system can be in Quality Driven (QD), Efficiency Driven (ED) or Quality-Efficiency-Driven (QED) regime. When the system is under QD or QED regime, the abandonments are negligible in the fluid limi…
The focus of this paper is on the asymptotics of large-time numbers of customers in time-periodic Markovian many-server queues with customer abandonment in heavy traffic. Limit theorems are obtained for the periodic number-of-customers processes under the fluid and diffusion scalings. Other results concern limits for general time-dependent queues and for time-homogeneous queues in steady state.
We study the ergodic properties of a class of controlled stochastic differential equations (SDEs) driven by $α$-stable processes which arise as the limiting equations of multiclass queueing models in the Halfin-Whitt regime that have heavy-tailed arrival processes. When the safety staffing parameter is positive, we show that the SDEs are uniformly ergodic and enjoy a polynomial rate of convergence to the invariant probability measure in total variation, which is uniform over all stationary Markov controls resulting in a locally Lipschitz continuous drift. We also derive a matching lower bound …
We consider a single server retrial queue with the server subject to interruptions and classical retrial policy for the access from the orbit to the server. We analyze the equilibrium distribution of the system and obtain the generating functions of the limiting distribution.
This paper studies many-server limits for multi-server queues that have a phase-type service time distribution and allow for customer abandonment. The first set of limit theorems is for critically loaded $G/Ph/n+GI$ queues, where the patience times are independent and identically distributed following a general distribution. The next limit theorem is for overloaded $G/ Ph/n+M$ queues, where the patience time distribution is restricted to be exponential. We prove that a pair of diffusion-scaled total-customer-count and server-allocation processes, properly centered, converges in distribution to…
In this paper, we consider systems that can be modelled by $M \mid M \mid n$ queues with heterogeneous servers and non informed customers. Considering any two servers: we show that the probability that the fastest server is busy is smaller than the probability that the slowest server is busy. Moreover, we show that the effective rate of service done by the fastest server is larger than effective rate of service done by the slowest server.
This paper purpose is to investigate exponential behavior conditions for the infinite servers queue with Poisson arrivals busy period length distribution. It is presented a general theoretical result that is the basis of this work. The complementary analysis rely on the infinite servers queue with Poisson arrivals busy period length distribution moments computation. In infinite servers queue with Poisson arrivals practical applications, in economic, management, and business areas, the management of the effective number of servers is essential since the physical presence of infinite servers is …
The mathematics of the finite single server queue with Poisson input and semi-Markov service times($M/SM/1/b$) is similar to that used for $BMAP/G/1/b$ systems. This observation results in new analytical formulas for a queue size in the $M/SM/1/b$ system. Both stationary and the transient solutions are considered
We propose a method based on probabilistic arguments to study the convexity of the autocorrelation function of processes associated with a single server queue. To illustrate the power of the method we apply it in two cases: to the workload process seen by the customers of a GI/GI/1 queue, and to the workload process of a fluid queue fed by a general Lévy process.
In this article it is shown that if the busy period of a MGinf queue system is PME distributed, the service time is a random variable with a long tail distribution. The result is obtained through Laplace transforms analysis.
A number of perfect simulation algorithms for multi-server First Come First Served queues have recently been developed. Those of Connor and Kendall (2015) and Blanchet, Pei, and Sigman (2015) use dominated Coupling from the Past (domCFTP) to sample from the equilibrium distribution of the Kiefer-Wolfowitz workload vector for stable M/G/c and GI/GI/c queues respectively, using Random Assignment queues as dominating processes. In this note we answer a question posed by Connor and Kendall (2015), by demonstrating how these algorithms may be modified in order to carry out domCFTP simultaneously fo…
This paper considers a work-conserving FIFO single-server queue with multiple batch Markovian arrival streams governed by a continuous-time finite-state Markov chain. A particular feature of this queue is that service time distributions of customers may be different for different arrival streams. After briefly discussing the actual waiting time distributions of customers from respective arrival streams, we derive a formula for the vector generating function of the time-average joint queue length distribution in terms of the virtual waiting time distribution. Further assuming the discrete phase…
We consider the coupling of a single server queue and a storage model defined as a Queue/Store model in Draief et al. 2004. We establish that if the input variables, arrivals at the queue and store, satisfy large deviations principles and are linked through an {\em exponential tilting} then the output variables (departures from each system) satisfy large deviations principles with the same rate function. This generalizes to the context of large deviations the extension of Burke's Theorem derived in Draief et al. 2004.
The queue system,with Poisson arrivals,constant service time and infinite servers, busy period distribution is intensively studied because, due to its probability density function quite easy interpretation, it may serve as a clue to interpret the queue systems, with Poisson arrivals, infinite servers, and other service time distributions, busy period distributions. In this work the queue system, with Poisson arrivals,constant service time and infinite servers, busy period distribution parameters are exactly computed and its probability density function is interpreted and explained. The only pr…
Following recent developments in the application of Stein's method in queueing theory, this paper is intended to be a short treatment showing how Stein's method can be developed and applied to the single server queue in heavy traffic. Here we provide two approaches to this approximation: one based on equilibrium couplings and another involving comparison of generators.
We consider a multi-server queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime: as the number of servers $n$ grows without a bound, the utilization approaches 1 from below at the rate $Θ(1/\sqrt{n})$. Assuming that the service time distribution is lattice-valued with a finite support, we characterize the limiting stationary queue length distribution in terms of the stationary distribution of an explicitly constructed Markov chain. Furthermore, we obtain an explicit expression for the critical exponent for the moment generating function of a limiting (scaled) steady-state queue length. This exponent has a compact…
The shortest-remaining-processing-time (SRPT) scheduling policy has been extensively studied, for more than 50 years, in single-server queues with infinitely patient jobs. Yet, much less is known about its performance in multiserver queues. In this paper, we present the first theoretical analysis of SRPT in multiserver queues with abandonment. In particular, we consider the M/GI/s+GI queue and demonstrate that, in the many-sever overloaded regime, performance in the SRPT queue is equivalent, asymptotically in steady state, to a preemptive two-class priority queue where customers with short ser…
In this paper, we consider a Lévy-driven fluid queueing system where the server may subject to breakdowns and repairs. In addition, the server will leave for a vacation each time when he finds an empty system. We cast the queueing process as a Lévy process modified to have random jumps at two classes of stopping times. By using the Kella-Whitt martingale method, we obtain the limiting distribution of the virtual waiting time process. Moreover, we investigate the busy period, the correlation structure and the stochastic decomposition properties. These results may be generalized to Lévy processe…
We consider queueing systems with n parallel queues under a Join the Shortest Queue (JSQ) policy in the Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic regime. We use the martingale method to prove that a scaled process counting the number of idle servers and queues of length exactly 2 weakly converges to a two-dimensional reflected Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, while processes counting longer queues converge to a deterministic system decaying to zero in constant time. This limiting system is comparable to that of the traditional Halfin-Whitt model, but there are key differences in the queueing behavior of the JSQ m…
Queueing systems with batch Markovian arrival process (BMAP) have paramount applications in the domain of wireless communication. The BMAP has been used to model the superposition of video sources and to approximate the super-position of data, voice and video traffic. This paper analyzes an infinite-buffer generally distributed batch-service queue with BMAP, general bulk service ($a,b$) rule and batch-size-dependent service time. In this proposed analysis, we mainly focus on deriving the bivariate vector generating function of queue and server content distribution together at departure epoch u…
This paper studies an infinite-server queue in a random environment, meaning that the arrival rate, the service requirements and the server work rate are modulated by a general càdlàg stochastic background process. To prove a large deviations principle, the concept of attainable parameters is introduced. Scaling both the arrival rates and the background process, a large deviations principle for the number of jobs in the system is derived using attainable parameters. Finally, some known results about Markov-modulated infinite-server queues are generalized and new results for several background …
We study a many-server queuing system with general service time distribution and state dependent service rates. The dynamics of the system are modeled using measure valued processes which keep track of the residual service times. Under suitable conditions, we prove the existence of a unique fluid limit.
We present the explicit construction of a stable queue with several servers and impatient customers, under stationary ergodic assumptions. Using a stochastic comparison of the (multivariate) workload sequence with two monotonic stochastic recursions, we propose a sufficient condition of existence of a unique stationary state of the system using Renovation theory. Whenever this condition is relaxed we use extension techniques to prove the existence of a stationary state in some cases.
We discuss weak convergence of the number of busy servers in a $G/G/\infty$ queue in the $J_1$-topology on the Skorokhod space. We prove two functional limit theorems, with random and nonrandom centering, respectively, thereby solving two open problems stated in Mikosch and Resnick (2006}. A new integral representation for the limit Gaussian process is given.
We consider a controlled double-ended queue consisting of two classes of customers, labeled sellers and buyers. The sellers and buyers arrive in a trading market according to two independent renewal processes. Whenever there is a seller and buyer pair, they are matched and leave the system instantaneously. The matching follows first-come-first-match service discipline. Those customers who cannot be matched immediately need to wait in the designated queue, and they are assumed to be impatient with generally distributed patience times. The control problem is concerned with the trade-off between …
A many-server queue operating under the earliest deadline first discipline, where the distributions of service time and deadline are generic, is studied at the law of large numbers scale. Fluid model equations, formulated in terms of the many-server transport equation and the recently introduced measure-valued Skorohod map, are proposed as a means of characterizing the limit. The main results are the uniqueness of solutions to these equations, and the law of large numbers scale convergence to the solutions.
We consider a Markovian queue subject to Poisson generated catastrophes. Whenever a catastrophe occurs, all customers are forced to abandon the system, the server is rendered inoperative and an exponential repair time is set on. We assume that the arriving customers decide whether to join the system or balk, based on a natural reward-cost structure. We study the balking behavior of the customers and derive the corresponding Nash equilibrium strategies.
We consider many-server queueing systems with heterogeneous exponential servers and renewal arrivals. The service rate of each server is a random variable drawn from a given distribution. We develop a framework for analyzing the heavy traffic limit of these queues in random environment using probability measure-valued stochastic processes. We introduce the measure-valued fairness process which denotes the proportion of cumulative idleness experienced by servers whose rates fall in a Borel subset of the support of the service rates. It can be shown that these fairness processes do not converge …
We develop rare-event simulation methodology for the analysis of loss events in a many-server loss system under quality-driven regime, focusing on the steady-state loss probability (i.e. fraction of lost customers over arrivals) and the behavior of the whole system leading to loss events. The analysis of these events requires working with the full measure-valued process describing the system. This is the first algorithm that is shown to be asymptotically optimal, in the rare-event simulation context, under the setting of many-server queues involving a full measure-valued descriptor.
In this paper, we consider a $G_t/G_t/\infty$ infinite server queueing model in a random environment. More specifically, the arrival rate in our server is modeled as a highly fluctuating stochastic process, which arguably takes into account some small time scale variations often observed in practice. We show a homogenization property for this system, which yields an approximation by a $M_t/G_t/\infty$ queue with modified parameters. Our limiting results include the description of the number of active servers, the total accumulated input and the solution of the storage equation. Hence in the fa…
We consider Poisson streams of exponentially distributed jobs arriving at each edge of a hypergraph of queues. Upon arrival, an incoming job is rooted to the shortest queue among the corresponding vertices. This generalizes many known models such as power-of-d load balancing and JSQ (join the shortest queue) on generic graphs. We provide a generic condition for stability of this model. We show that some graph topologies lead to a loss of capacity, implying more restrictive stability conditions than in, e.g., complete graphs.
In this paper, the asymptotic behaviour of the distribution tail of the stationary waiting time $W$ in the $GI/GI/2$ FCFS queue is studied. Under subexponential-type assumptions on the service time distribution, bounds and sharp asymptotics are given for the probability ${\bf P}\{W>x\}$. We also get asymptotics for the distribution tail of a stationary two-dimensional workload vector and of a stationary queue length. These asymptotics depend heavily on the traffic load.
Each site of $\mathbb{Z}$ hosts a queue with arrival rate $λ$. A single server, starting at the origin, serves its current queue at rate $μ$ until that queue is empty, and then moves to the longest neighbouring queue. In the critical case $λ= μ$, we show that the server returns to every site infinitely often. We also give a sharp iterated logarithm result for the server's position. Important ingredients in the proofs are that the times between successive queues being emptied exhibit doubly exponential growth, and that the probability that the server changes its direction is asymptotically equa…
In this paper, we display methods for the computation of convergence and perturbation bounds for $M_t/M_t/1$ system with balking, catastrophes, server failures and repairs. Based on the logarithmic norm of linear operators, the bounds on the rate of convergence, perturbation bounds, and the main limiting characteristics of the queue-length process are obtained. Finally, we consider the application of all obtained estimates to a specific model.
A single-server queuing model is considered with customers that have deadlines. If a customer's deadline elapses before service is offered, the customer abandons the system (customers do not abandon while being served). When the server becomes available, it offers service to the customer having earliest deadline among those that are in the queue. We obtain a fluid limit of the queue length and abandonment processes and for the occupation measure of deadlines, in the form of measure-valued processes. We characterize the limit by means of a Skorohod problem in a time-varying domain, which has an…
We study the load balancing system operating under Join the Shortest Queue (JSQ) in the many-server heavy-traffic regime. If $N$ is the number of servers, we let the difference between the total service rate and the total arrival rate be $N^{1-α}$ with $α>0$. We show that for $α>4$ the average queue length behaves similarly to the classical heavy-traffic regime. Specifically, we prove that the distribution of the average queue length multiplied by $N^{1-α}$ converges to an exponential random variable. Moreover, we show a result analogous to state space collapse. We provide two proofs for our r…
We establish a heavy-traffic limit theorem on convergence in distribution for the number of customers in a many-server queue when the number of servers tends to infinity. No critical loading condition is assumed. Generally, the limit process does not have trajectories in the Skorohod space. We give conditions for the convergence to hold in the topology of compact convergence. Some new results for an infinite server are also provided.
This paper considers a network of infinite-server queues with the special feature that, triggered by specific events, the network population vector may undergo a linear transformation (a `multiplicative transition'). For this model we characterize the joint probability generating function in terms of a system of partial differential equations; this system enables the evaluation of (transient as well as stationary) moments. We show that several relevant systems fit in the framework developed, such as networks of retrial queues, networks in which jobs can be rerouted when links fail, and storage…
In the infinite servers queue with Poisson arrivals real life practical applications, the busy period and the busy cycle probabilistic study is of main importance. But it is a very difficult task. In this text, we show that by solving a Riccati equation induced by this queue transient probabilities monotony study as time functions, we obtain a collection of service length distribution functions, for which both the busy period and the busy cycle have lengths with quite simple distributions, generally given in terms of exponential distributions and the degenerate at the origin distribution.
