calculation of steady-state probabilities of mm queues further approaches进一步计算稳态概率的mm队列的方法.pdfVIP

JOURNAL OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND DECISION SCIENCES, 6(1), 43–50 c Copyright 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Calculation of Steady-State Probabilities of M/M Queues: Further Approaches DAVID K. SMITH† School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QE United Kingdom Abstract. This paper draws attention to the risk of rounding error in the numerical evaluation of steady-state probabilities for the M/M family of queues. A method for avoiding the risk is presented which is easy to program for calculation in practice. Keywords: Accuracy, computing, queue models. 1. Introduction The M/M family of queues is generally the first to be introduced to students of operational research and queueing theory. The assumptions made in the model are that customers arrive randomly at a service point at a known rate λ per unit time, wait until a server is available and then require a ran- dom time with an exponential distribution with mean 1/µ for service. It is possible to calculate the steady state probabilities for the number of cus- tomers in the queue system for many variants of this family of queues, and the results appear in many textbooks. However, little notice appears to have been taken of the practicalities of calculating these probabilities numerically. Recently, Pasternack and Drezner([2]) presented a recursive approach which avoided some compu- tational difficulties. In this note, we suggest a different approach which gives similar computational accuracy, and is easy to use by students who are familiar with spreadsheets. Our interest in the problem arose when circumstances were encountered where the obvious approaches to solving the queueing models proved liable to severe rounding error. † Requests for reprints should be sent to David K. Smith, School of Mathem