Article ID: | iaor19961464 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 22 |
Issue: | 10 |
Start Page Number: | 1057 |
End Page Number: | 1073 |
Publication Date: | Dec 1995 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Smith J. MacGregor, Gosavi Hemant D. |
Keywords: | queueing networks |
The authors propose a piece-wise linear upper bound on the throughput rate from a network of series-parallel queues where arrivals occur through a single infinite queue. This bound is tight and is observed to be extremely accurate in forecasting the actual throughput rate. The authors also describe the monotonicity of throughput as a function of the arrival rate and specify a condition under which the upper bound may be computed. They approximate analytically the throughput measured as a function of the arrival rate for two tandem exponential queues where the first queue has an infinite buffer while the second queue has a finite buffer. The authors extend this analysis to elementary split and merge queueing networks. They demonstrate the generality and robustness of this asymptotic property, for larger series-parallel networks with general service times and specify the set up of a single simulation experiment which can be used to retrieve the throughput for any arrival rate, as well as other network performance measures.