Equilibrium balking strategies in Markovian queues with working vacations

The equilibrium balking strategies are investigated in the paper for observable and unobservable single-server queues with working vacations. In such an M/M/1 queue with working vacations, the server undertakes the workload with a lower service rate rather than completely stops to work during the vacation period. Upon arrival, the customers decide whether to join or balk the queue based on observation of the queue length and the status of the server, along with the reward-cost structure of the system. Accordingly, four cases with respect to different levels of information are studied and the corresponding Nash equilibria are derived. Finally, the effect of the information levels as well as several parameters on the equilibrium threshold and equilibrium entrance probabilities is illustrated by numerical examples.     

Analysis of customers’ impatience in queues with server vacations

Many models for customers impatience in queueing systems have been studied in the past; the source of impatience has always been taken to be either a long wait already experienced at a queue, or a long wait anticipated by a customer upon arrival. In this paper we consider systems with servers vacations where customers’ impatience is due to an absentee of servers upon arrival. Such a model, representing frequent behavior by waiting customers in service systems, has never been treated before in the literature. We present a comprehensive analysis of the single-server, M/M/1 and M/G/1 queues, as well as of the multi-server M/M/c queue, for both the multiple and the single-vacation cases, and obtain various closed-form results. In particular, we show that the proportion of customer abandonments under the single-vacation regime is smaller than that under the multiple-vacation discipline. This work was supported by the Euro-Ngi network of excellence.     

Strategic behavior and social optimization in Markovian vacation queues: The case of heterogeneous customers

We consider a single server queueing system in which service shuts down when no customers are present, and is resumed when the queue length reaches a given critical length. We assume customers are heterogeneous on delay sensitivity and analyze customers’ strategic response to this mechanism and compare it to the overall optimal behavior. We provide algorithms to compute the equilibrium arrival rates and also derive the monotonicity of equilibrium and optimal arrival rates. We show that there may exist multiple equilibria in such a system and the optimal arrival rate may be larger or smaller than the decentralized equilibrium one.     

Customer equilibrium and optimal strategies in Markovian queues in series

We consider series of M/M/m queues with strategic customer behavior. Customers arrive to the first queue and decide whether to enter the system or balk and, if they enter, up to which queue to proceed before departing. Each customer makes an independent decision, with the objective of maximizing her total net benefit, which is equal to the value of service minus a cost due to expected delay. We formulate the customer decision as a game and identify the unique symmetric Nash equilibrium strategy, which is expressed in a backward recursive form. We also analyze the problem of maximizing the total customer welfare and establish the relationship between the equilibrium and the welfare maximizing strategies.     

Geo/Geo/1 retrial queue with non-persistent customers and working vacations

In this paper, we consider a Geo/Geo/1 retrial queue with non-persistent customers and working vacations. The server works at a lower service rate in a working vacation period. Assume that the customers waiting in the orbit request for service with a constant retrial rate, if the arriving retrial customer finds the server busy, the customer will go back to the orbit with probability q (0≤q≤1), or depart from the system immediately with probability $\bar{q}=1-q$ . Based on the necessary and sufficient condition for the system to be stable, we develop the recursive formulae for the stationary distribution by using matrix-geometric solution method. Furthermore, some performance measures of the system are calculated and an average cost function is also given. We finally illustrate the effect of the parameters on the performance measures by some numerical examples.     

Batch arrival queues with vacations and server setup

We study a single server queueing system whose arrival stream is compound Poisson and service times are generally distributed. Three types of idle period are considered: threshold, multiple vacations, and single vacation. For each model, we assume after the idle period, the server needs a random amount of setup time before serving. We obtain the steady-state distributions of system size and waiting time and expected values of the cycle for each model. We also show that the distributions of system size and waiting time of each model are decomposed into two parts, whose interpretations are provided. As for the threshold model, we propose a method to find the optimal value of threshold to minimize the total expected operating cost.     

Markovian queues with Poisson control

We investigate Markovian queues that are examined by a controller at random times determined by a Poisson process. Upon examination, the controller sets the service speed to be equal to the minimum of the current number of customers in the queue and a certain maximum service speed; this service speed prevails until the next examination time. We study the resulting two-dimensional Markov process of queue length and server speed, in particular two regimes with time scale separation, specifically for infinitely frequent and infinitely long examination times. In the intermediate regime the analysis proves to be extremely challenging. To gain further insight into the model dynamics we then analyse two variants of the model in which the controller is just an observer and does not change the speed of the server.     

Strategic behavior in queues with the effect of the number of customers behind

In this paper, we investigate the strategic behavior in queues by considering the effect of the number of customers behind. The equilibrium joining strategy of customers is obtained and its implications for the service system are examined. We find that the complete queue transparency (i.e., disclosing the real-time system information) can have positive effect on customers, which might encourage more customers to join. Further, the follow-the-crowd (FTC) behavior can be observed, which results in multiple equilibria. By comparing the customer welfare under two different information levels, we demonstrate that, somewhat surprisingly, the queue transparency does not necessarily hurt the customer welfare, and a higher customer welfare can be obtained in the transparent case than that in opaque case when the demand volume is large.     

Analysis of multi-server queues with station and server vacations

In this paper, we consider GI/M/c queues with two classes of vacation mechanisms: Station vacation and server vacation. In the first one, all the servers take vacation simultaneously whenever the system becomes empty, and they also return to the system at the same time, i.e., station vacation is a group vacation for all servers. This phenomenon occurs in practice, for example, when the system consists of a set of machines monitored by a single operator, or the system consists of inseparable interconnected parallel machines. In such situations the whole station has to be treated as a single entity for vacation when the system is utilized for a secondary task. For the second class of vacation mechanisms, each server takes its own vacation whenever it complexes a service and finds no customers waiting in the queue, which occurs, for instance in the post office, when each server is a relatively independent working unit, and can itself be used for other purposes. For both models, we derive steady state probabilities that have matrix geometric form, and develop computational algorithms to obtain numerical solutions. We also analyze and make comparisons of these models based on numerical observations.     

On priority queues with impatient customers

In this paper, we study three different problems where one class of customers is given priority over the other class. In the first problem, a single server receives two classes of customers with general service time requirements and follows a preemptive-resume policy between them. Both classes are impatient and abandon the system if their wait time is longer than their exponentially distributed patience limits. In the second model, the low-priority class is assumed to be patient and the single server chooses the next customer to serve according to a non-preemptive priority policy in favor of the impatient customers. The third problem involves a multi-server system that can be used to analyze a call center offering a call-back option to its impatient customers. Here, customers requesting to be called back are considered to be the low-priority class. We obtain the steady-state performance measures of each class in the first two problems and those of the high-priority class in the third problem by exploiting the level crossing method. We furthermore adapt an algorithm from the literature to obtain the factorial moments of the low-priority queue length of the multi-server system exactly.      

Ticket queues with regular and strategic customers

Queueing Systems - We study a Markovian single-server ticket queue where, upon arrival, each customer can draw a number from a take-a-number machine, while the number of the customer currently...     

空竭服务多重休假的离散时间GI/G/1重试排队系统

考虑带有空竭服务多重休假的离散时间GI/G/1重试排队系统,其中重试空间中顾客的重试时间和服务台的休假时间均服从几何分布.通过矩阵几何方法,给出了该系统的一系列性能分析指标.最终利用逼近的方法得到了部分数值结果,并通过算例说明主要的参数变化对系统人数的影响.     

Analysis of ticket queues with reneging customers

In this paper we analyse queues in which customer waiting positions are represented by ticket numbers. The customers at any time can observe the number being served and may leave the queue without obtaining the service (reneging). Assuming the customers’ tendency to renege depends dynamically on the difference between their ticket number and the number being served, we develop an approximation procedure in order to calculate the percentage of reneging customers. We give a detailed exposition of the analysis for the case of single-server system and provide a highlight of extension to multi-server systems. As an application of the approximating procedure, we also illustrate numerically that, under a hypothetical reneging behaviour, offering customers extra information on the actual queue length can reduce the customer reneging percentage by as much as 65%.     

Bayesian inference in Markovian queues

This paper is concerned with the Bayesian analysis of general queues with Poisson input and exponential service times. Joint posterior distribution of the arrival rate and the individual service rate is obtained from a sample consisting inn observations of the interarrival process andm complete service times. Posterior distribution of traffic intensity inM/M/c is also obtained and the statistical analysis of the ergodic condition from a decision point of view is discussed.     

Discrete-time GI/Geo/1 queue with multiple working vacations

Consider the discrete time GI/Geo/1 queue with working vacations under EAS and LAS schemes. The server takes the original work at the lower rate rather than completely stopping during the vacation period. Using the matrix-geometric solution method, we obtain the steady-state distribution of the number of customers in the system and present the stochastic decomposition property of the queue length. Furthermore, we find and verify the closed property of conditional probability for negative binomial distributions. Using such property, we obtain the specific expression for the steady-state distribution of the waiting time and explain its two conditional stochastic decomposition structures. Finally, two special models are presented.      

Exponential bounds for queues with Markovian arrivals

Exponential bounds [queueb]e ^b are found for queues whose increments are described by Markov Additive Processes. This is done by application of maximal inequalities to exponential martingales for such processes. Through a thermodynamic approach the constant is shown to be the decay rate for an asymptotic lower bound for the queue length distribution. The class of arrival processes considered includes a wide variety of Markovian multiplexer models, and a general treatment of these is given, along with that of Markov modulated arrivals. Particular attention is paid to the calculation of the prefactor .     

G/M/1 queues with delayed vacations

We considerG/M/1 queues with multiple vacation discipline, where at the end of every busy period the server stays idle in the system for a period of time called changeover time and then follows a vacation if there is no arrival during the changeover time. The vacation time has a hyperexponential distribution. By using the methods of the shift operator and supplementary variable, we explicitly obtain the queue length probabilities at arrival time points and arbitrary time points simultaneously.     

The discrete-time MAP/PH/1 queue with multiple working vacations

We consider a discrete-time single-server queueing model where arrivals are governed by a discrete Markovian arrival process (DMAP), which captures both burstiness and correlation in the interarrival times, and the service times and the vacation duration times are assumed to have a general phase-type distributions. The vacation policy is that of a working vacation policy where the server serves the customers at a lower rate during the vacation period as compared to the rate during the normal busy period. Various performance measures of this queueing system like the stationary queue length distribution, waiting time distribution and the distribution of regular busy period are derived. Through numerical experiments, certain insights are presented based on a comparison of the considered model with an equivalent model with independent arrivals, and the effect of the parameters on the performance measures of this model are analyzed.