Paper 4, Section II, J
Part II, 2011
At an queue, the arrival times form a Poisson process of rate while service times are independent of each other and of the arrival times and have a common distribution with mean .
(i) Show that the random variables giving the number of customers left in the queue at departure times form a Markov chain.
(ii) Specify the transition probabilities of this chain as integrals in involving parameter . [No proofs are needed.]
(iii) Assuming that and the chain is positive recurrent, show that its stationary distribution has the generating function given by
for an appropriate function , to be specified.
(iv) Deduce that, in equilibrium, has the mean value