Retrial queuing systems are widely used in teletraffic theory and computer and communication networks. Although there has been a rapid growth in the literature on retrial queueing systems, the research on retrial queues with nonexponential retrial times is very limited. This paper is concerned with the analytical treatment of an M/G/1 retrial queue with general retrial times. Our queueing model is different from most single server retrial queueing models in several respect. First, customers who find the server busy are queued in the orbit in accordance with an FCFS (first-come-first-served) discipline and only the customer at the head of the queue is allowed access to the server. Besides, a retrial time begins (if applicable) only when the server completes a service rather than upon a service attempt failure. We carry out an extensive analysis of the queue, including a necessary and sufficient condition for the system to be stable, the steady state distribution of the server state and the orbit length, the waiting time distribution, the busy period, and other related quantities. Finally, we study the joint distribution of the server state and the orbit length in non-stationary regime.
