A functional central limit theorem in equilibrium for a large network in which customers join the shortest of several queues
Carl Graham
备注：
A new preprint math.PR/0403538, has been written as a combined version of the present preprint and the preprint math.PR/0312335. It is recommended to read the new combined version instead of the two others
We consider N single server infinite buffer queues with service rate beta. Customers arrive at rate N times alpha,choose L queues uniformly, and join the shortest one. The stability condition is alpha strictly less than beta. We study in equilibrium the sequence of the fraction of queues of length at least k, in the large N limit. We prove a functional central limit theorem on an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space with its weak topology, with limit a stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We use ergodicity and justify the inversion of limits of long times and large sizes N by a compactness-uniqueness method. The main tool for proving tightness of the ill-known invariant laws and ergodicity of the limit is a global exponential stability result for the nonlinear dynamical system obtained in the functional law of large numbers limit.
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.
The main target of this paper is to present the Markov chain C that, not giving explicitly the queue lengths stationary probabilities, has the necessary information to its determination for open networks of queues with several classes of customers and exponential service times, allowing to overcome ingeniously this problem. The situation for closed networks, in the same conditions, much easier is also presented.
Two networks of queues models, presented initially by Jackson, in the open case, and Gordon and Newell, in the closed case, stochastic processes are presented and studied in some of their details and problems. The service times are exponentially distributed and there is only one class of customers.
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…
In this paper we solve a particular stochastic recursion in the stationary ergodic framework, and propose some applications of this result to the study of regenerativity (that is, finiteness of busy cycles) and stationarity of some queueing systems: pure delay systems, in which all customers are immediately served, and queues with impatient customers. In this latter case under the FIFO discipline, we prove as well the existence of a stationary workload on an enlarged probability space.
In this paper, we study the stability of queues with impatient customers. Under general stationary ergodic assumptions, we first provide some conditions for such a queue to be regenerative (i.e. to empty a.s. an infinite number of times). In the particular case of a single server operating in First in, First out, we prove the existence (in some cases, on an enlarged probability space) of a stationary workload. This is done by studying stochastic recursions under the Palm settings, and by stochastic comparison of stochastic recursions.
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 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.
In this paper, we deal with an $D/GI/1$ vacation system with impatient customers. We give a sufficient condition for the existence of a limit distribution of the waiting time and integral equations are derived in both reneging and balking scenarios. Explicit solutions are given when vacation times are exponentially distributed and service times are either exponentially distributed or deterministic.
We consider a single-server GI/GI/1 queueing system with feedback. We assume the service times distribution to be (intermediate) regularly varying. We find the tail asymptotics for a customer's sojourn time in two regimes: the customer arrives in an empty system, and the customer arrives in the system in the stationary regime. In particular, in the case of Poisson input we use the branching processes structure and provide more precise formulae. As auxiliary results, we find the tail asymptotics for the busy period distribution in a single-server queue with an intermediate varying service times…
This paper studies the equilibrium behavior of customers in the Geo/Geo/1 queueing system with multiple working vacations. The arriving customers decide whether to join or to balk the queueing systems based on the information of the queue length and the states of the server. In observable queues, partially observable queues and unobservable queues three cases we obtain the equilibrium balking strategies based on the reward-cost structure and socially optimal strategies for all customers. Furthermore, we present some numerical experiments to illustrate the effect of the information level on the…
We consider Markovian multiserver retrial queues where a blocked customer has two opportunities for abandonment: at the moment of blocking or at the departure epoch from the orbit. In this queueing system, the number of customers in the system (servers and buffer) and that in the orbit form a level-dependent quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) process whose stationary distribution is expressed in terms of a sequence of rate matrices. Using a simple perturbation technique and a matrix analytic method, we derive Taylor series expansion for nonzero elements of the rate matrices with respect to the number…
Stochastic networks with complex structures are key modelling tools for many important applications. In this paper, we consider a specific type of network: the retrial queueing systems with priority. This type of queueing system is important in various applications, including telecommunication and computer management networks with big data. For this type of system, we propose a detailed stochastic decomposition approach to study its asymptotic behaviour of the tail probability of the number of customers in the steady-state for retrial queues with two types (Type-1 and Type-2) of customers, in …
We study systems with two classes of impatient customers who differ across the classes in their distribution of service times and patience times. The customers are served on a first-come, first served basis (FCFS) regardless of their class. Such systems are common in customer call centers, which often segment their arrivals into classes of callers whose requests differ in their complexity and criticality. We first consider an $M$/$G$/1 + $M$ queue and then analyze the $M$/$M$/$k$ + $M$ case. Analyzing these systems using a queue length process proves intractable as it would require us to keep …
In this paper, we study the stability of queues with impatient customers. Under general stationary ergodic assumptions, we first provide some conditions for such a queue to be regenerative (i.e. to empty a.s. an infinite number of times). In the particular case of a single server operating in First in, First out, we prove the existence (in some cases, on an enlarged probability space) of a stationary workload. This is done by studying a non-monotonic stochastic recursion under the Palm settings, and by stochastic comparison of stochastic recursions.
We consider an $M/M/1$ queueing system with impatient customers with multiple and single vacations. It is assumed that customers are impatient whenever the state of the server. We derive the probability generating functions of the number of customers in the system and we obtain some performance measures.
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.
There are two contributions to the literature in this note. Firstly, we point out that under some weak conditions the result in Swensen (1986) on the remaining loads in a GI/M/$c$ queue with impatient customers, derived under the assumption that the distribution of inter-arrival times is Coxian, is also valid for the more general phase type distribution. From this result the distributions of the virtual and the actual waiting time can easily be obtained. Secondly, the relation to an alternative expression for the distribution of the virtual waiting time derived by Kawanishi and Takine (2015) i…
Upon arrival to a ticket queue, a customer is offered a slip of paper with a number on it and is told the number of the customer currently in service. The arriving customer then chooses whether to take the slip or balk, a decision based on the perceived queue length and associated waiting time. Even after taking a ticket, a customer may abandon the queue, an event that will be unobservable until the abandoning customer would have begun service. In contrast, a standard queue has a physical waiting area so that abandonment is apparent immediately when it takes place and balking is based on the a…
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…
In this paper, we consider a discrete-time preemptive priority queue with different service rates for two classes of customers, one with high-priority and the other with low-priority. This model corresponds to the classical preemptive priority queueing system with two classes of independent Poisson customers and a single exponential server. Due to the possibility of customers' arriving and departing at the same time in a discrete-time queue, the model considered in this paper is more complicated. In this model, we focus on the characterization of exact tail asymptotics for the joint stationary…
When an explicit expression for a probability distribution function $F(x)$ can not be found, asymptotic properties of the tail probability function $\bar{F}(x)=1-F(x)$ are very valuable, since they provide approximations or bounds for system performance, and approaches for computing probability distribution. In this paper, we study tail asymptotic properties for the number of the customers in the $M/G/1$ retrial queueing system. For queueing systems, studies on asymptotic tails have mainly concentrated on the first order asymptotic behavior. To best our knowledge, there is no second order tail…
We consider three parallel service models in which customers of several types are served by several types of servers subject to a bipartite compatibility graph, and the service policy is first come first served. Two of the models have a fixed set of servers. The first is a queueing model in which arriving customers are assigned to the longest idling compatible server if available, or else queue up in a single queue, and servers that become available pick the longest waiting compatible customer, as studied by Adan and Weiss, 2014. The second is a redundancy service model where arriving customer…
We study a double-ended queue which consists of two classes of customers. Whenever there is a pair of customers from both classes, they are matched and leave the system immediately. The matching follows first-come-first-serve principle. If a customer from one class cannot be matched immediately, he/she will stay in a queue and wait for the upcoming arrivals from the other class. Thus there cannot be non-zero numbers of customers from both classes simultaneously in the system. We also assume that each customer can leave the queue without being matched because of impatience. The arrival processe…
In this paper, we deal with a two-queue polling system attended by a single server. The server visits the queues according to a Markovian routing mechnism. There are two-class customers in the first queue. Customers of each queue are served in the exhaustive discipline. For this model, we study the joint number of customers, the cycle time and the waiting times. we are also devoted to deriving the exact asymptotics for the scaled delay in the heavy-traffic scenario. In addition, the scaled delays with large switch-over times are discussed for the first time in the Markovian polling systems. Fi…
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 considers a discrete-time single-server queue with a single acceptance period for a Poissonian population of homogeneous customers. Customers are served on a first-come first-served (FCFS) basis, and their service times are independent and identically distributed with a general distribution. We assume that each customer chooses her/his arrival-time slot with the goal of minimizing her/his expected waiting time in competition with other customers. For this queueing game, we derive a symmetric (mixed-strategy) Nash equilibrium; that is, an equilibrium arrival-time distribution of homo…
Customers arrive at rate N times alpha on a network of N single server infinite buffer queues, choose L queues uniformly, join the shortest one, and are served there in turn at rate beta. We let N go to infinity.We prove a functional central limit theorem (CLT) for the tails of the empirical measures of the queue occupations,in a Hilbert space with the weak topology, with limit given by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. The a priori assumption is that the initial data converge.This completes a recent functional CLT in equilibrium result for which convergence for the initial data was not known in …
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 model a long queue of humans by a continuous-space model in which, when a customer moves forward, they stop a random distance behind the previous customer, but do not move at all if their distance behind the previous customer is below a threshold. The latter assumption leads to ``waves" of motion in which only some random number $W$ of customers move. We prove that $\Pr(W > k)$ decreases as order $k^{-1/2}$; in other words, for large $k$ the $k$'th customer moves on average only once every order $k^{1/2}$ service times. A more refined analysis relies on a non-obvious asymptotic relation to …
A single server retrial queueing system with two-classes of orbiting customers, and general class dependent service times is considered. If an arriving customer finds the server unavailable, it enters a virtual queue, called the orbit, according to its type. The customers from the orbits retry independently to access the server according to the constant retrial policy. We derive the generating function of the stationary distribution of the number of orbiting customers at service completion epochs in terms of the solution of a Riemann boundary value problem. For the symmetrical system we also d…
A single server commences its service at time zero every day. A random number of customers decide when to arrive to the system so as to minimize the waiting time and tardiness costs. The costs are proportional to the waiting time and the tardiness with rates $α$ and $β$, respectively. Each customer's optimal arrival time depends on the others' decisions, thus the resulting strategy is a Nash equilibrium. This work considers the estimation of the ratio $\displaystyleθ\equiv β/(α+β)$ from queue length data observed daily at discrete time points, given that customers use a Nash equilibrium arriva…
This paper presents a second-order heavy traffic analysis of a single server queue that processes customers having deadlines using the earliest-deadline-first scheduling policy. For such systems, referred to as real-time queueing systems, performance is measured by the fraction of customers who meet their deadline, rather than more traditional performance measures, such as customer delay, queue length or server utilization. To model such systems, one must keep track of customer lead times (the time remaining until a customer deadline elapses) or equivalent information. This paper reviews the e…
We calculate asymptotics of the distribution of the number of customers in orbit in a two-class priority retrial $M/G/1$-type queueing model. In this model, priority customers wait in line while non-priority customers join an orbit and retry later. Although the generating function and moments of the number of customers in orbit has been analyzed before, asymptotics of the distribution have not been thoroughly investigated. We use singularity analysis of the probability generating function to do just that. Our results show that different regimes exist for these asymptotics in case of light-tail…
In this paper, we present a stability criterion for Processor Sharing queues, in which the throughput may depend on the number of customers in the system (in such cases such as interferences between the users). Such a system is represented by a point measure-valued stochastic recursion keeping track of the remaining processing times of the customers.
We present a comparison of the service disciplines in real-time queueing systems (the customers have a deadline before which they should enter the service booth). We state that giving priority to customers having an early deadline minimizes the average stationary lateness. We show this result by comparing adequate random vectors with the Schur-Convex majorization ordering.
We consider a semi-open queueing network (SOQN), where a customer requires exactly one resource from the resource pool for service. If there is a resource available, the customer is immediately served and the resource enters an inner network. If there is no resource available, the new customer has to wait in an external queue until one becomes available ("backordering"). When a resource exits the inner network, it is returned to the resource pool and waits for another customer. In this paper, we present a new solution approach. To approximate the inner network with the resource pool of the SOQ…
Motivated by health care systems with repeated services that have both personnel (nurse and physician) and space (beds) constraints, we study a restricted version of the Erlang-R model. The space restriction policies we consider are blocking or holding in a pre-entrant queue. We develop many-server approximations for the system performance measures when either policy applies, and explore the connection between them. We show that capacity allocation of both resources should be determined simultaneously, and derive the methodology to determine it explicitly. We show that the system dynamics is c…
In this paper we study a two-queue polling model with zero switch-over times and $k$-limited service (serve at most $k_i$ customers during one visit period to queue $i$, $i=1,2$) in each queue. The arrival processes at the two queues are Poisson, and the service times are exponentially distributed. By increasing the arrival intensities until one of the queues becomes critically loaded, we derive exact heavy-traffic limits for the joint queue-length distribution using a singular-perturbation technique. It turns out that the number of customers in the stable queue has the same distribution as th…
The paper studies a multiserver retrial queueing system with $m$ servers. Arrival process is a point process with strictly stationary and ergodic increments. A customer arriving to the system occupies one of the free servers. If upon arrival all servers are busy, then the customer goes to the secondary queue, orbit, and after some random time retries more and more to occupy a server. A service time of each customer is exponentially distributed random variable with parameter $μ_1$. A time between retrials is exponentially distributed with parameter $μ_2$ for each customer. Using a martingale ap…
Motivated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this paper investigates customers' infection risk by evaluating the overlapping time of a virtual customer with others in queueing systems. Most of the current methodologies focus on characterizing the risk in stationary systems, which may not apply to the more practical time-varying systems. As such, we propose an approximation framework that relies on the fluid limit to compute the expected overlapping time in time-varying queueing systems. Simulation experiments verify the accuracy of our approach.
In this paper we analyze an $M/M/1$ queueing system with an arbitrary number of customer classes, with class-dependent exponential service rates and preemptive priorities between classes. The queuing system can be described by a multi-dimensional Markov process, where the coordinates keep track of the number of customers of each class in the system. Based on matrix-analytic techniques and probabilistic arguments we develop a recursive method for the exact determination of the equilibrium joint queue length distribution. The method is applied to a spare parts logistics problem to illustrate the…
Consider the workload process for a single server queue with deterministic service times in which customers arrive according to a scheduled traffic process. A scheduled arrival sequence is one in which customers are scheduled to arrive at constant interarrival times, but each customer actual arrival time is perturbed from her scheduled arrival time by a random perturbation. In this paper, we consider a critically loaded queue in which the service rate equals the arrival rate. Unlike a queue fed by renewal traffic, this queue can be stable even in the presence of critical loading. We identify a…
In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of the tail probability of the number of customers in the steady-state $M/G/1$ retrial queue with Bernoulli schedule, under the assumption that the service time distribution has a regularly varying tail. Detailed tail asymptotic properties are obtained for the (conditional and unconditional) probability of the number of customers in the (priority) queue, orbit and system, respectively.
This paper studies an infinite buffer single server queueing model with exponentially distributed service times and negative arrivals. The ordinary (positive) customers arrive in batches of random size according to renewal arrival process, and joins the queue/server for service. The negative arrivals are characterized by two independent Poisson arrival processes, a negative customer which removes the positive customer undergoing service, if any, and a disaster which makes the system empty by simultaneously removing all the positive customers present in the system. Using the supplementary varia…
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 revisit the Markovian queueing system with a single server, infinite capacity queue and the special queue skipping policy. Customers arrive in batches, but are served one by one according to any conservative discipline. The size of the arriving batch becomes known upon its arrival and at any time instant the total number of customers in the system is also known. According to the adopted queue skipping policy if a batch, which size is greater than the current system size, arrives to the system, all current customers in the system are removed from it and the new batch is placed …
We consider sojourn (or response) times in processor-shared queues that have a finite customer capacity. Computing the response time of a tagged customer involves solving a finite system of linear ODEs. Writing the system in matrix form, we study the eigenvectors and eigenvalues in the limit as the size of the matrix becomes large. This corresponds to finite capacity models where the system can only hold a large number $K$ of customers. Using asymptotic methods we reduce the eigenvalue problem to that of a standard differential equation, such as the Airy equation. The dominant eigenvalue leads…
In this paper we consider a single-server, cyclic polling system with switch-over times. A distinguishing feature of the model is that the rates of the Poisson arrival processes at the various queues depend on the server location. For this model we study the joint queue length distribution at polling epochs and at server's departure epochs. We also study the marginal queue length distribution at arrival epochs, as well as at arbitrary epochs (which is not the same in general, since we cannot use the PASTA property). A generalised version of the distributional form of Little's law is applied to…
A parallel server system with $n$ identical servers is considered. The service time distribution has a finite mean $1/μ$, but otherwise is arbitrary. Arriving customers are be routed to one of the servers immediately upon arrival. Join-Idle-Queue routing algorithm is studied, under which an arriving customer is sent to an idle server, if such is available, and to a randomly uniformly chosen server, otherwise. We consider the asymptotic regime where $n\to\infty$ and the customer input flow rate is $λn$. Under the condition $λ/μ<1/2$, we prove that, as $n\to\infty$, the sequence of (appropriatel…
In this paper, equilibrium strategies and optimal balking strategies of customers in a constant retrial queue with multiple vacations and the $N$-policy under two information levels, respectively, are investigated. We assume that there is no waiting area in front of the server and an arriving customer is served immediately if the server is idle; otherwise (the server is either busy or on a vacation) it has to leave the system to join a virtual retrial orbit waiting for retrials according to the FCFS rules. After a service completion, if the system is not empty, the server becomes idle, availab…
