This paper develops a generalization of Brownian motion with stationary, autocorrelated increments as a tractable model for problems in business and finance. We show that any real continuous Gaussian Markov process with stationary increments and smooth covariance function is characterized by three parameters quantifying drift, volatility, and autocorrelations. We model a queue as a functional of a process defined by those characteristics and derive its transient distribution conditional on its history.
In this paper we analyze the distributional properties of a busy period in an on-off fluid queue and the a first passage time in a fluid queue driven by a finite state Markov process. In particular, we show that in Anick-Mitra-Sondhi model the first passage time has a IFR distribution and the busy period has a DFR distribution.
In this paper we present the fluid limit of an heavily loaded Earliest Deadline First queue with impatient customers, represented by a measure-valued process keeping track of residual time-credits of lost and waiting customers. This fluid limit is the solution of an integrated transport equation. We then use this fluid limit to derive fluid approximations of the processes counting the number of waiting and already lost customers.
We study a single server queue under a processor-sharing type of scheduling policy, where the weights for determining the sharing are given by functions of each job's remaining service(processing) amount, and obtain a fluid limit for the scaled measure-valued system descriptors.
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…
In this note we prove that the speed of convergence of the workload of a Lévy-driven queue to the quasi-stationary distribution is of order $1/t$. We identify also the Laplace transform of the measure giving this speed and provide some examples.
In this paper, we investigate exact tail asymptotics for the stationary distribution of a fluid model driven by the $M/M/c$ queue, which is a two-dimensional queueing system with a discrete phase and a continuous level. We extend the kernel method to study tail asymptotics of its stationary distribution, and a total of three types of exact tail asymptotics is identified from our study and reported in the paper.
This paper contains an asymptotic analysis of a fluid model for a heavily loaded processor sharing queue. Specifically, we consider the behavior of solutions of critical fluid models as time approaches \infty. The main theorems of the paper provide sufficient conditions for a fluid model solution to converge to an invariant state and, under slightly more restrictive assumptions, provide a rate of convergence. These results are used in a related work by Gromoll for establishing a heavy traffic diffusion approximation for a processor sharing queue.
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.
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…
Four different fluid model formulations have been recently developed for $G_t/GI/N+GI$ queues, including a two-parameter fluid model in Whitt (2006) by tracking elapsed service and patience times of each customer, a measure-valued fluid model in Kang and Ramanan (2010) and its extension in Zu{ñ}iga (2014) by tracking elapsed service and patience times of each customer, and a measure-valued fluid model in Zhang (2013) by tracking residual service and patience times of each customer. We show that the two fluid models tracking elapsed times (Whitt's and Kang and Ramanan's fluid models) are equiva…
In this paper, we consider queueing systems where the dynamics are non-stationary and state-dependent. For performance analysis of these systems, fluid and diffusion models have been typically used. Although they are proven to be asymptotically exact, their effectiveness as approximations in the non-asymptotic regime needs to be investigated. We find that existing fluid and diffusion approximations might be either inaccurate under simplifying assumptions or computationally intractable. To address this concern, this paper focuses on developing a methodology based on adjusting the fluid model so…
We study in this paper a variation of the acclaimed CSMA random access protocol. We will focus on the case where back-off rates at each node is polynomial in the size of the queue. Under a condition relating the exponent in the polynomial rates and the geometry of the interference graph, we prove convergence of the scaled process to a deterministic fluid limit up to the time a queue reaches $0$ on the fluid scale . We outline the difficulties arising at that time and solve them in the case of a complete interference graph. This paper relies on a new method to obtain a fully coupled stochastic …
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…
In this paper, we analyze a two-queue random time-limited Markov modulated polling model. In the first part of the paper, we investigate the fluid version: Fluid arrives at the two queues as two independent flows with deterministic rate. There is a single server that serves both queues at constant speeds. The server spends an exponentially distributed amount of time in each queue. After the completion of such a visit time to one queue, the server instantly switches to the other queue, i.e., there is no switchover time. For this model, we first derive the Laplace-Stieltjes Transform (LST) of th…
This paper extends previous work by the authors. We consider the local time process of a strong Markov process, add negative drift, and reflect it à la Skorokhod. The resulting process is used to model a fluid queue. We derive an expression for the joint law of the duration of an excursion, the maximum value of the process on it, and the time distance between successive excursions. We work with a properly constructed stationary version of the process. Examples are also given in the paper.
In this short communication we study a fluid queue with a finite buffer. The performance measure we are interested in is the occupation time over a finite time period, i.e., the fraction of time the workload process is below some fixed target level. We construct an alternating sequence of sojourn times $D_1,U_1,...$ where the pairs $(D_i,U_i)_{i\in\mathbb{N}}$ are i.i.d. random vectors. We use this sequence to determine the distribution function of the occupation time in terms of its double transform.
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…
This paper addresses the question when the underlying Markov process of a multiclass queueing network is positive Harris recurrent. It is well-known that stability of the fluid limit model is a sufficient condition for this. Hence, stability of fluid (limit) models is of vital interest. Recently, it has been shown that if the fluid model satisfies certain properties, it is stable if and only if there exists a Lyapunov function. In this paper a new method is provided to conclude that the underlying Markov process is positive Harris recurrent if the fluid model is stable by using explicitly the …
This contribution investigates asymptotic properties of transient queue length process $$ Q(t)=\max\left(x+X(t)-ct, \sup_{0\leq s\leq t}\left(X(t)-X(s)-c(t-s)\right)\right),\ \ \ t\geq 0 $$ in Gaussian fluid queueing model, where input process $X$ is modeled by a centered Gaussian process with stationary increments, $c>0$ is the output rate and $x=Q(0)\ge0$. More specifically, under some mild conditions on $X$, exact asymptotics of $$\mathbb{P}\left(Q(T_u)>u\right) $$ as $u\to\infty$, is derived. The play between $u$ and $T_u$ leads to two qualitatively different regimes: (A) short-time horizo…
The PS-model treated in this paper is motivated by freelance job websites where multiple freelancers compete for a single job. In the context of such websites, multistage service of a job means collection of applications from multiple freelancers. Under Markovian stochastic assumptions, we develop fluid limit approximations for the PS-model in overload. Based on this approximation, we estimate what proportion of freelancers get the jobs they apply for. In addition, the PS-model studied here is an instant of PS with routing and impatience, for which no Lyapunov function is known, and we suggest…
We analyze the behavior of closed product-form queueing networks when the number of customers grows to infinity and remains proportionate on each route (or class). First, we focus on the stationary behavior and prove the conjecture that the stationary distribution at non-bottleneck queues converges weakly to the stationary distribution of an ergodic, open product-form queueing network. This open network is obtained by replacing bottleneck queues with per-route Poissonian sources whose rates are determined by the solution of a strictly concave optimization problem. Then, we focus on the transie…
We study a system, where a random flow of customers is served by servers (called agents) invited on-demand. Each invited agent arrives into the system after a random time; after each service completion, an agent returns to the system or leaves it with some fixed probabilities. Customers and/or agents may be impatient, that is, while waiting in queue, they leave the system at a certain rate (which may be zero). We consider the queue-length-based feedback scheme, which controls the number of pending agent invitations, depending on the customer and agent queue lengths and their changes. The basic…
Ramaswami showed recently that standard Brownian motion arises as the limit of a family of Markov-modulated linear fluid processes. We pursue this analysis with a fluid approximation for Markov-modulated Brownian motion. Furthermore, we prove that the stationary distribution of a Markov-modulated Brownian motion reflected at zero is the limit from the well-analyzed stationary distribution of approximating linear fluid processes. Key matrices in the limiting stationary distribution are shown to be solutions of a new quadratic equation, and we describe how this equation can be efficiently solved…
We consider a sequence of single-server queueing models operating under a service policy that incorporates batches into processor sharing: arriving jobs build up behind a gate while waiting to begin service, while jobs in front of the gate are served according to processor sharing. When they have been completed, the waiting jobs move in front of the gate and the cycle repeats. We model this system with a pair of measure valued processes describing the jobs in front of and behind the gate. Under mild asymptotically critical conditions and a law-of-large-numbers scaling, we prove that the pair o…
In the present paper, we study the evolution of an overloaded cyclic polling model that starts empty. Exploiting a connection with multitype branching processes, we derive fluid asymptotics for the joint queue length process. Under passage to the fluid dynamics, the server switches between the queues infinitely many times in any finite time interval causing frequent oscillatory behavior of the fluid limit in the neighborhood of zero. Moreover, the fluid limit is random. Additionally, we suggest a method that establishes finiteness of moments of the busy period in an M/G/1 queue.
We investigate a processor sharing queue with renewal arrivals and generally distributed service times. Impatient jobs may abandon the queue, or renege, before completing service. The corresponding stochastic processes are represented by measure valued Markov processes on R^2\_+. A scaling procedure that gives rise to a fluid model with a nontrivial, yet tractable steady state behavior, is presented. This fluid model model captures many essential features of the underlying stochastic model, and it is used to analyze the impact of impatience in processor sharing queues.
We use Hamilton equations to find optimal paths to big queues in Jackson networks. They are shown to be given by fluid trajectories of the dual network. The fluid equations are shown to be dual to the Hamilton equations. Thus, a version of the extended Onzager-Machlup principle is proved: a fluctuation trajectory is the time reversal of a relaxation trajectory of the dual dynamic. The case of a two-node network is given a geometric treatment.
We consider a two-dimensional stochastic fluid model with $N$ ON-OFF inputs and temporary assistance, which is an extension of the same model with $N = 1$ in Mahabhashyam et al. (2008). The rates of change of both buffers are piecewise constant and dependent on the underlying Markovian phase of the model, and the rates of change for Buffer 2 are also dependent on the specific level of Buffer 1. This is because both buffers share a fixed output capacity, the precise proportion of which depends on Buffer 1. The generalization of the number of ON-OFF inputs necessitates modifications in the origi…
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 analyze asymptotically a differential-difference equation, that arises in a Markov-modulated fluid model. We use singular perturbation methods to analyze the problem with appropriate scalings of the two state variables. In particular, the ray method and asymptotic matching are used.
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…
This work considers a many-server queueing system in which impatient customers with i.i.d., generally distributed service times and i.i.d., generally distributed patience times enter service in the order of arrival and abandon the queue if the time before possible entry into service exceeds the patience time. The dynamics of the system is represented in terms of a pair of measure-valued processes, one that keeps track of the waiting times of the customers in queue and the other that keeps track of the amounts of time each customer being served has been in service. Under mild assumptions, essen…
We consider a stochastic fluid queue served by a constant rate server and driven by a process which is the local time of a certain Markov process. Such a stochastic system can be used as a model in a priority service system, especially when the time scales involved are fast. The input (local time) in our model is always singular with respect to the Lebesgue measure which in many applications is ``close'' to reality. We first discuss how to rigorously construct the (necessarily) unique stationary version of the system under some natural stability conditions. We then consider the distribution of…
We consider a fluid queue fed by multiple On-Off flows with heavy-tailed (regularly varying) On periods. Under fairly mild assumptions, we prove that the workload distribution is asymptotically equivalent to that in a reduced system. The reduced system consists of a ``dominant'' subset of the flows, with the original service rate subtracted by the mean rate of the other flows. We describe how a dominant set may be determined from a simple knapsack formulation. The dominant set consists of a ``minimally critical'' set of On-Off flows with regularly varying On periods. In case the dominant set c…
One of the key performance measures in queueing systems is the exponential decay rate of the steady-state tail probabilities of the queue lengths. It is known that if a corresponding fluid model is stable and the stochastic primitives have finite moments, then the queue lengths also have finite moments, so that the tail probability \pr(\cdot >s) decays faster than s^{-n} for any n. It is natural to conjecture that the decay rate is in fact exponential. In this paper an example is constructed to demonstrate that this conjecture is false. For a specific stationary policy applied to a network wit…
We consider a queuing model with the workload evolving between consecutive i.i.d.\ exponential timers $\{e_q^{(i)}\}_{i=1,2,...}$ according to a spectrally positive Lévy process $Y_i(t)$ that is reflected at zero, and where the environment $i$ equals 0 or 1. When the exponential clock $e_q^{(i)}$ ends, the workload, as well as the Lévy input process, are modified; this modification may depend on the current value of the workload, the maximum and the minimum workload observed during the previous cycle, and the environment $i$ of the Lévy input process itself during the previous cycle. We analys…
We introduce a multiclass single-server queueing system in which the arrival rates depend on the current job in service. The system is characterized by a matrix of arrival rates in lieu of a vector of arrival rates. Our proposed model departs from existing state-dependent queueing models in which the parameters depend primarily on the number of jobs in the system rather than on the job in service. We formulate the queueing model and its corresponding fluid model and proceed to obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions for stability via fluid models. Utilizing the natural connection with t…
In this paper we study a reflected Markov-modulated Brownian motion with a two sided reflection in which the drift, diffusion coefficient and the two boundaries are (jointly) modulated by a finite state space irreducible continuous time Markov chain. The goal is to compute the stationary distribution of this Markov process, which in addition to the complication of having a stochastic boundary can also include jumps at state change epochs of the underlying Markov chain because of the boundary changes. We give the general theory and then specialize to the case where the underlying Markov chain h…
We consider a service system where agents (or, servers) are invited on-demand. Customers arrive as a Poisson process and join a customer queue. Customer service times are i.i.d. exponential. Agents' behavior is random in two respects. First, they can be invited into the system exogenously, and join the agent queue after a random time. Second, with some probability they rejoin the agent queue after a service completion, and otherwise leave the system. The objective is to design a real-time adaptive agent invitation scheme that keeps both customer and agent queues/waiting-times small. We study a…
In this paper, we study an $N$ server fork-join queue with nearly deterministic arrival and service times. Specifically, we present a fluid limit for the maximum queue length as $N\to\infty$. This fluid limit depends on the initial number of tasks. In order to prove these results, we develop extreme value theory and diffusion approximations for the queue lengths.
In this paper, we consider an $N$-queue overloaded polling network attended by a single cyclically roving server. Upon the completion of his service, a customer is either routed to another queue or leaves the system. All the switches are instantaneous and random multi-gated service discipline is employed within each queue. With the asymptotic theorem of multi-type branching processes and the exhaustiveness of service discipline, the fluid asymptotic process of the scaled joint queue length process is investigated. The fluid limit is of the similar shape with that of the polling system without …
In this paper, we present a functional fluid limit theorem and a functional central limit theorem for a queue with an infinity of servers M/GI/$\infty$. The system is represented by a point-measure valued process keeping track of the remaining processing times of the customers in service. The convergence in law of a sequence of such processes after rescaling is proved by compactness-uniqueness methods, and the deterministic fluid limit is the solution of an integrated equation in the space $\mathcal{S}^{\prime}$ of tempered distributions. We then establish the corresponding central limit theor…
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.
We study a double-ended queue where buyers and sellers arrive to conduct trades. When there is a pair of buyer and seller in the system, they immediately transact a trade and leave. Thus there cannot be non-zero number of buyers and sellers simultaneously in the system. We assume that sellers and buyers arrive at the system according to independent renewal processes, and they would leave the system after independent exponential patience times. We establish fluid and diffusion approximations for the queue length process under a suitable asymptotic regime. The fluid limit is the solution of an o…
We consider a single-server queue with renewal arrivals and i.i.d. service times, in which the server employs either the preemptive Shortest Remaining Processing Time (SRPT) policy, or its non-preemptive variant, Shortest Job First (SJF). We show that for given stochastic primitives (initial condition, arrival and service processes), the model has the same fluid limit under either policy. In particular, we conclude that the well-known queue length optimality of preemptive SRPT is also achieved, asymptotically on fluid scale, by the simpler-to-implement SJF policy. We also conclude that on flui…
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 say that a random variable is $light$-$tailed$ if moments of order $2+ε$ are finite for some $ε>0$; otherwise, we say that it is $heavy$-$tailed$. We study queueing networks that operate under the Max-Weight scheduling policy, for the case where some queues receive heavy-tailed and some receive light-tailed traffic. Queues with light-tailed arrivals are often delay stable (that is, expected queue sizes are uniformly bounded over time) but can also become delay unstable because of resource-sharing with other queues that receive heavy-tailed arrivals. Within this context, and for any given "t…
We use fluid limits to explore the (in)stability properties of wireless networks with queue-based random-access algorithms. Queue-based random-access schemes are simple and inherently distributed in nature, yet provide the capability to match the optimal throughput performance of centralized scheduling mechanisms in a wide range of scenarios. Unfortunately, the type of activation rules for which throughput optimality has been established, may result in excessive queue lengths and delays. The use of more aggressive/persistent access schemes can improve the delay performance, but does not offer …
We consider a pair of coupled queues driven by independent spectrally-positive Levy processes. With respect to the bi-variate workload process this framework includes both the coupled processor model and the two-server fluid network with independent Levy inputs. We identify the joint transform of the stationary workload distribution in terms of Wiener-Hopf factors corresponding to two auxiliary Levy processes with explicit Laplace exponents. We reinterpret and extend the ideas of Cohen and Boxma (1983) to provide a general and uniform result with a neat transform expression.
We consider a queueing network in which there are constraints on which queues may be served simultaneously; such networks may be used to model input-queued switches and wireless networks. The scheduling policy for such a network specifies which queues to serve at any point in time. We consider a family of scheduling policies, related to the maximum-weight policy of Tassiulas and Ephremides [IEEE Trans. Automat. Control 37 (1992) 1936--1948], for single-hop and multihop networks. We specify a fluid model and show that fluid-scaled performance processes can be approximated by fluid model solutio…
We set out a general procedure which allows the approximation of certain Markov chains by the solutions of differential equations. The chains considered have some components which oscillate rapidly and randomly, while others are close to deterministic. The limiting dynamics are obtained by averaging the drift of the latter with respect to a local equilibrium distribution of the former. Some general estimates are proved under a uniform mixing condition on the fast variable which give explicit error probabilities for the fluid approximation. Mitzenmacher, Prabhakar and Shah [In Proc. 43rd Ann. S…
