Mean sojourn times with multiclass feedback queues with gated disciplines

In this paper, we investigate multiclass feedback queues with gated disciplines. The server selects the stations by a nonpreemptive priority scheduling algorithm and serves customers in the selected station by either a gated FCFS discipline or a gated priority discipline. We take a rather systematic approach to their mean sojourn times. We define conditional expected sojourn times for all customers and derive their expressions from an analysis of busy periods. Since they are shown to be linear in some components of the system states, their steady state mean values can be derived from simple limiting procedures. These mean values can be obtained from a set of linear equations.