We prove several results about the rate of convergence to stationarity, that is, the spectral gap, for the M/M/n queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime. We identify the limiting rate of convergence to steady-state, and discover an asymptotic phase transition that occurs w.r.t. this rate. In particular, we demonstrate the existence of a constant $B^*\approx1.85772$ s.t. when a certain excess parameter $B\in(0,B^*]$, the error in the steady-state approximation converges exponentially fast to zero at rate $\frac{B^2}{4}$. For $B>B^*$, the error in the steady-state approximation converges exponentially fast to zero at a different rate, which is the solution to an explicit equation given in terms of special functions. This result may be interpreted as an asymptotic version of a phase transition proven to occur for any fixed n by van Doorn [Stochastic Monotonicity and Queueing Applications of Birth-death Processes (1981) Springer]. We also prove explicit bounds on the distance to stationarity for the M/M/n queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime, when $B<B^*$. Our bounds scale independently of $n$ in the Halfin-Whitt regime, and do not follow from the weak-convergence theory.
We prove a monotonicity condition satisfied by the Erlang C formula when computed in the Halfin-Whitt regime. This property was recently conjectured in Janssen et al. [2011].
We show that the steady-state distribution of the join-the-shortest-queue (JSQ) system converges, in the Halfin-Whitt regime, to its diffusion limit at a rate of at least $1/\sqrt{n}$, where $n$ is the number of servers. Our proof uses Stein's method and, specifically, the recently proposed prelimit generator comparison approach. The JSQ system is non-trivial, high-dimensional, and has a state-space collapse component, and our analysis may serve as a helpful example to readers wishing to apply the approach to their own setting.
In this paper, we study the $G/\mathit{GI}/N$ queue in the Halfin--Whitt regime. Our first result is to obtain a deterministic fluid limit for the properly centered and scaled number of customers in the system which may be used to provide a first-order approximation to the queue length process. Our second result is to obtain a second-order stochastic approximation to the number of customers in the system in the Halfin--Whitt regime. This is accomplished by first centering the queue length process by its deterministic fluid limit and then normalizing by an appropriate factor. We then proceed to…
We consider a hybrid diffusion process that is a combination of two Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes with different restraining forces. This process serves as the heavy-traffic approximation to the Markovian many-server queue with abandonments in the critical Halfin-Whitt regime. We obtain an expression for the Laplace transform of the time-dependent probability distribution, from which the spectral gap is explicitly characterized. The spectral gap gives the exponential rate of convergence to equilibrium. We further give various asymptotic results for the spectral gap, in the limits of small and l…
We consider the heavy-traffic approximation to the $GI/M/s$ queueing system in the Halfin-Whitt regime, where both the number of servers $s$ and the arrival rate $λ$ grow large (taking the service rate as unity), with $λ=s-β\sqrt{s}$ and $β$ some constant. In this asymptotic regime, the queue length process can be approximated by a diffusion process that behaves like a Brownian motion with drift above zero and like an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process below zero. We analyze the first passage times of this hybrid diffusion process to levels in the state space that represent congested states in the ori…
We consider optimal control of a multi-class queue in the Halfin--Whitt regime, and revisit the notion of asymptotic optimality and the associated optimality gaps. The existing results in the literature for such systems provide asymptotically optimal controls with optimality gaps of $o(\sqrt{n})$ where $n$ is the system size, for example, the number of servers. We construct a sequence of asymptotically optimal controls where the optimality gap grows logarithmically with the system size. Our analysis relies on a sequence of Brownian control problems, whose refined structure helps us achieve the…
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…
This paper studies a class of load balancing algorithms for many-server ($N$ servers) systems assuming finite buffer with size $b-1$ (i.e. a server can have at most one job in service and $b-1$ jobs in queue). We focus on steady-state performance of load balancing algorithms in the heavy traffic regime such that the load of system is $λ= 1 - N^{-α}$ for $0<α<0.5,$ which we call sub-Halfin-Whitt regime ($α=0.5$ is the so-called the Halfin-Whitt regime). We establish a sufficient condition under which the probability that an incoming job is routed to an idle server is one asymptotically. The cla…
We consider the so-called GI/GI/N queue, in which a stream of jobs with independent and identically distributed service times arrive as a renewal process to a common queue that is served by $N$ identical parallel servers in a first-come-first-serve manner. We introduce a new representation for the state of the system and, under suitable conditions on the service and interarrival distributions, establish convergence of the corresponding sequence of centered and scaled stationary distributions in the so-called Halfin-Whitt asymptotic regime. In particular, this resolves an open question posed by…
This paper studies the steady-state properties of the Join the Shortest Queue model in the Halfin-Whitt regime. We focus on the process tracking the number of idle servers, and the number of servers with non-empty buffers. Recently, Eschenfeldt & Gamarnik (2015) proved that a scaled version of this process converges, over finite time intervals, to a two-dimensional diffusion limit as the number of servers goes to infinity. In this paper we prove that the diffusion limit is exponentially ergodic, and that the diffusion scaled sequence of the steady-state number of idle servers and non-empty buf…
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…
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 …
In this paper, we develop a stochastic algorithm based on the Euler--Maruyama scheme to approximate the invariant measure of the limiting multidimensional diffusion of $G/Ph/n+GI$ queues in the Halfin-Whitt regime. Specifically, we prove a non-asymptotic error bound between the invariant measures of the approximate model from the algorithm and the limiting diffusion. To establish the error bound, we employ the recently developed Stein's method for multi-dimensional diffusions, in which the regularity of Stein's equation developed by Gurvich (2014, 2022) plays a crucial role. We further prove t…
We consider the FCFS $\mathit{GI}/\mathit{GI}/n$ queue in the so-called Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic regime. We prove that under minor technical conditions the associated sequence of steady-state queue length distributions, normalized by $n^{1/2}$, is tight. We derive an upper bound on the large deviation exponent of the limiting steady-state queue length matching that conjectured by Gamarnik and Momcilovic [Adv. in Appl. Probab. 40 (2008) 548-577]. We also prove a matching lower bound when the arrival process is Poisson. Our main proof technique is the derivation of new and simple bounds for th…
We consider the FCFS G/G/n queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime, in the presence of heavy-tailed distributions (i.e. infinite variance). We prove that under minimal assumptions, i.e. only that processing times have finite 1 + epsilon moment and inter-arrival times have finite second moment, the sequence of stationary queue length distributions, normalized by $n^{\frac{1}{2}}$, is tight. All previous tightness results for the stationary queue length required that processing times have finite 2 + epsilon moment. Furthermore, we develop simple and explicit bounds on the stationary queue length in tha…
We consider the FCFS $GI/GI/n$ queue in the Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic regime, and prove bounds for the steady-state probability of delay (s.s.p.d.) for generally distributed processing times. We prove that there exist $ε_1, ε_2 > 0$, depending on the first three moments of the inter-arrival and processing time distributions, such that the s.s.p.d. is bounded from above by $\exp\big(-ε_1 B^2\big)$ as the associated excess parameter $B \rightarrow \infty$; and by $1 - ε_2 B$ as $B \rightarrow 0$. We also prove that the tail of the steady-state number of idle servers has a Gaussian decay. We pro…
We consider a large-scale flexible service system with two large server pools and two types of customers. Servers in pool 1 can only serve type 1 customers, while server in pool 2 are flexible -- they can serve both types 1 and 2. (This is a so-called "N-system." Our results hold for a more general class of systems as well.) The service rate of a customer depends both on its type and the pool where it is served. We study a priority service discipline, where type 2 has priority in pool 2, and type 1 prefers pool 1. We consider the Halfin-Whitt asymptotic regime, where the arrival rate of custom…
Consider a system of $N$ parallel single-server queues with unit-exponential service time distribution and a single dispatcher where tasks arrive as a Poisson process of rate $λ(N)$. When a task arrives, the dispatcher assigns it to one of the servers according to the Join-the-Shortest Queue (JSQ) policy. Eschenfeldt and Gamarnik (Math. Oper. Res., 43(3):867-886, 2018) identified a novel limiting diffusion process that arises as the weak-limit of the appropriately scaled occupancy measure of the system under the JSQ policy in the Halfin-Whitt regime, where $(N - λ(N)) / \sqrt{N} \to β> 0$ as $…
We consider a heterogeneous queueing system consisting of one large pool of $O(r)$ identical servers, where $r\to\infty$ is the scaling parameter. The arriving customers belong to one of several classes which determines the service times in the distributional sense. The system is heavily loaded in the Halfin-Whitt sense, namely the nominal utilization is $1-a/\sqrt{r}$ where $a>0$ is the spare capacity parameter. Our goal is to obtain bounds on the steady state performance metrics such as the number of customers waiting in the queue $Q^r(\infty)$. While there is a rich literature on deriving p…
Consider a system of $N$ parallel single-server queues with unit-exponential service time distribution and a single dispatcher where tasks arrive as a Poisson process of rate $λ(N)$. When a task arrives, the dispatcher assigns it to one of the servers according to the Join-the-Shortest Queue (JSQ) policy. Eschenfeldt and Gamarnik (2015) established that in the Halfin-Whitt regime where $(N-λ(N))/\sqrt{N}\toβ>0$ as $N\to\infty$, appropriately scaled occupancy measure of the system under the JSQ policy converges weakly on any finite time interval to a certain diffusion process as $N\to\infty$. R…
We consider the Halfin-Whitt diffusion process $X_d(t)$, which is used, for example, as an approximation to the $m$-server $M/M/m$ queue. We use recently obtained integral representations for the transient density $p(x,t)$ of this diffusion process, and obtain various asymptotic results for the density. The asymptotic limit assumes that a drift parameter $β$ in the model is large, and the state variable $x$ and the initial condition $x_0$ (with $X_d(0)=x_0>0$) are also large. We obtain some alternate representations for the density, which involve sums and/or contour integrals, and expand these…
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…
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 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…
We consider $M/Ph/n+M$ queueing systems in steady state. We prove that the Wasserstein distance between the stationary distribution of the normalized system size process and that of a piecewise Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process is bounded by $C/\sqrtλ$, where the constant $C$ is independent of the arrival rate $λ$ and the number of servers $n$ as long as they are in the Halfin-Whitt parameter regime. For each integer $m>0$, we also establish a similar bound for the difference of the $m$th steady-state moments. For the proofs, we develop a modular framework that is based on Stein's method. The fr…
We analyse Join-the-Shortest-Queue in a contemporary scaling regime known as the Non-Degenerate Slowdown regime. Join-the-Shortest-Queue (JSQ) is a classical load balancing policy for queueing systems with multiple parallel servers. Parallel server queueing systems are regularly analysed and dimensioned by diffusion approximations achieved in the Halfin-Whitt scaling regime. However, when jobs must be dispatched to a server upon arrival, we advocate the Non-Degenerate Slowdown regime (NDS) to compare different load-balancing rules. In this paper we identify novel diffusion approximation and ti…
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…
In this paper, we develop a stochastic algorithm based on Euler-Maruyama scheme to approximate the invariant measure of the limiting multidimensional diffusion of the $M/Ph/n+M$ queue. Specifically, we prove a non-asymptotic error bound between the invariant measures of the approximate model from the algorithm and the limiting diffusion of the queueing model. Our result also provides an approximation to the steady-state of the diffusion-scaled queueing processes in the Halfin-Whitt regime given the well established interchange of limits property. To establish the error bound, we employ the rec…
Given a random variable $N$ with values in ${\mathbb{N}}$, and $N$ i.i.d. positive random variables $\{μ_k\}$, we consider a queue with renewal arrivals and $N$ exponential servers, where server $k$ serves at rate $μ_k$, under two work conserving routing schemes. In the first, the service rates $\{μ_k\}$ need not be known to the router, and each customer to arrive at a time when some servers are idle is routed to the server that has been idle for the longest time (or otherwise it is queued). In the second, the service rates are known to the router, and a customer that arrives to find idle serv…
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 …
A queueing model has $J\ge2$ heterogeneous service stations, each consisting of many independent servers with identical capabilities. Customers of $I\ge2$ classes can be served at these stations at different rates, that depend on both the class and the station. A system administrator dynamically controls scheduling and routing. We study this model in the central limit theorem (or heavy traffic) regime proposed by Halfin and Whitt. We derive a diffusion model on $\mathbb {R}^I$ with a singular control term that describes the scaling limit of the queueing model. The singular term may be used to …
