Paper 4, Section II, J

Applied Probability
Part II, 2011

At an M/G/1\mathrm{M} / \mathrm{G} / 1 queue, the arrival times form a Poisson process of rate λ\lambda while service times S1,S2,S_{1}, S_{2}, \ldots are independent of each other and of the arrival times and have a common distribution GG with mean ES1<+\mathbb{E} S_{1}<+\infty.

(i) Show that the random variables QnQ_{n} 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 dG(t)\mathrm{d} G(t) involving parameter λ\lambda. [No proofs are needed.]

(iii) Assuming that ρ=λES1<1\rho=\lambda \mathbb{E} S_{1}<1 and the chain (Qn)\left(Q_{n}\right) is positive recurrent, show that its stationary distribution (πk,k0)\left(\pi_{k}, k \geqslant 0\right) has the generating function given by

k0πksk=(1ρ)(s1)g(s)sg(s),s1\sum_{k \geqslant 0} \pi_{k} s^{k}=\frac{(1-\rho)(s-1) g(s)}{s-g(s)},|s| \leqslant 1

for an appropriate function gg, to be specified.

(iv) Deduce that, in equilibrium, QnQ_{n} has the mean value

ρ+λ2ES122(1ρ)\rho+\frac{\lambda^{2} \mathbb{E} S_{1}^{2}}{2(1-\rho)}