2/27/2014

Queuing

Queuing Theory
• The basic phenomenon of queuing arises
whenever a shared facility needs to be
accessed for service by a large number of
users.
• Study of the phenomena of standing,
waiting, and serving is called Queuing
Theory.
• Involves the study of the waiting times,
lengths, and other properties of queues.
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Applications of Queuing Theory
• Telecommunications
• Traffic control
• Determining the sequence of computer
operations
• Health services (e.g. control of hospital bed
assignments)
• Airport traffic, airline ticket sales
• Layout of manufacturing systems.
• Lift/Elevator systems in multi‐storey
buildings.
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Customer n

Arrival  Begin  End 

event service service
Delay Activity
Time

Interarrival
Arrival  Begin  End 
event service service
Delay Activity

Time

Customer n+1

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Queuing System Model 

Customers
Queue Server

Queuing System

• Use Queuing models to 
– Describe the behavior of queuing systems
– Evaluate system performance

Fundamentals of Queuing Theory
• Arrival Process
– That determines how the objects arrive in
the system.
• Service Process‐Service Rate
– That determines the task processing time
• Number of Servers
– Total number of servers available to
process the tasks
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Fundamentals of Queuing Theory
• Arrivals
– Uniform, Deterministic or random
• Departures
– Uniform, Deterministic or random
• Discipline
– FIFO and LIFO are most popular
– FIFO is more prevalent in traffic engineering

Queue Notation
Number of
Arrival rate nature service channels

X /Y / N
Departure rate nature
• Popular notations:
– D/D/1, M/D/1, M/M/1, M/M/N
– D = deterministic distribution
– M = exponential distribution

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Queue Analysis – Graphical
D/D/1 Queue
Departure
Rate
Delay of nth arriving vehicle Arrival
Rate
Maximum queue
Point of Queue
Vehicles

Dissipation
Maximum delay

Total vehicle delay

Queue at time, t1

t1 Time

Example 5.7

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Queue Analysis – Numerical

   1.0

• M/D/1
– Average length of queue 2
Q
21   

1   
– Average time waiting in queue w  
2   1   

1 2 
t  
– Average time spent in system 2   1   

λ = arrival rate μ = departure rate

Queue Analysis – Numerical

   1.0

• M/M/1
– Average length of queue 2
Q
1   

1  
– Average time waiting in queue w  
     

1
t
– Average time spent in system  

λ = arrival rate μ = departure rate

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Queue Analysis – Numerical

  N  1.0

• M/M/N
– Average length of queue P0  N 1  1 
Q  2
N ! N  1   N  

 Q 1
– Average time waiting in queue w 
 

 Q
t
– Average time spent in system 

λ = arrival rate μ = departure rate

M/M/N 

  N  1.0
– Probability of having no vehicles 
1
P0  N 1
 nc
N
 n!
nc  0

N !1   N 
c

– Probability of having n vehicles
 n P0  n P0
Pn  for n  N Pn  for n  N
n! N n N N!

– Probability of being in a queue
N 1
P0 
Pn  N 
N ! N 1   N 
λ = arrival rate μ = departure rate

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Example 5.13