Reliability Evaluation of a Multi-state Network with Multiple Sinks under Individual Accuracy Rate Constraint

From the viewpoint of service level agreements (SLAs), Internet service providers and customers are gradually focusing on transmission accuracy. The Internet service provider should provide the specific bandwidth and individual accuracy rate requirement by their SLAs to each customer. This paper mainly evaluates the system reliability that a stochastic computer network can fulfill all requirements at all sinks. An efficient algorithm is proposed to generate the lower boundary points, minimal capacity vectors satisfying the demand and accuracy rate requirement for all sinks. The system reliability can be computed in terms of such points by applying recursive sum of disjoint products.     

互联网接入服务客户满意度实证研究——以陕西省为例

针对陕西省网站用户流失率超过80％反映出的陕西省互联网接入服务客户满意度指数很低的现实,构建互联网接入服务客户满意度模型,在对陕西省223家网站用户抽样问卷调查的基础上,运用结构方程模型,实证分析互联网接人服务客户满意度及其影响因素的关系,认定接人资费、客户沟通、硬件设施、服务质量及客户关怀对网站用户满意度都有显著影响,提出提升满意度的几点对策.     

银行服务窗口调度策略模型的统计分析

 用较少投入显著降低顾客排队等待时间的服务窗口调度策略对银行保持顾客有重要意义。根据采集的某银行顾客到达时间和服务时间数据,使用最佳平方逼近方法拟合出顾客到达间隔时间及服务时间曲线,经柯尔莫哥洛夫-斯米尔诺夫检验法验证数据符合M/M/n排队论模型分析条件。分别对普通顾客和VIP顾客进行了M/M/n建模分析,比较统计分析结果,确定服务窗口均衡调度策略是较优的调度策略,该调度模式可以在不追加硬件资源投入的前提下,缩短顾客排队等待时间,提高顾客满意度。     

Performance measures of M/G/1 retrial queues with recurrent customers,breakdowns, and general delays

In this paper, an M/G/1 retrial system with two classes of customers: transit and recurrent customers is studied. After service completion, recurrent customers always return to the orbit and transit customers leave the system forever. The server is subject to breakdowns and delayed repairs. The customer whose service is interrupted stays in the service, waiting for delay and repair of the server. After repair this customer completes his service. The study of the system concerns the joint generating function of the server state and the queue length in steady state. Some performance measures of the system are then derived and some numerical results are presented to illustrate the effect of the system parameters on the developed performance measures.     

Analysis of an unreliable MX/G1G2/1/repeated service queue with delayed repair under randomized vacation policy

Abstract

In this article we consider an unreliable M^X/G/1 queue with two types of general heterogeneous service and optional repeated service subject to server’s break down and delayed repair under randomized vacation policy. We assume that customer arrive to the system according to a compound Poisson process. The server provides two types of general heterogeneous service and a customer can choose either type of service before its service start. After the completion of either type of service, the customer has the further option to repeat the same type of service once again. While the server is working with any types of service or repeated service, it may breakdown at any instant. Further the concept of randomized vacation is also introduced. For this model, we first derive the joint distribution of state of the server and queue size by considering both elapsed and remaining time, which is one of the objective of this article. Next, we derive Laplace Stieltjes transform of busy period distribution. Finally, we obtain some important performance measure and reliability indices of this model.     

Equilibrium strategies in a constant retrial queue with setup time and the N-policy

Abstract

In this article, customers’ strategic behavior and social optimation in a constant retrial queue with setup time and the N-policy are investigated. Customers who find the server isn’t idle either leave forever or enter an orbit. After a service, the server will seek a customer from the orbit at a constant rate. The server is closed whenever the system becomes empty, and is activated when the number of waitlisted customers reaches a threshold. We obtain the equilibrium arrival rates in different states. There exist both Follow-the-Crowd (FTC) and Avoid-the-Crowd (ATC) behaviors. Through the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, we numerically obtain the optimal solution of the social welfare maximization problem. Finally, numerical examples are presented to illustrate the sensitivity of system performance measures.     

Approximate queue length distribution of a discriminatory processor sharing queue with impatient customers

We consider a two-class processor sharing queueing system with impatient customers. The system operates under the discriminatory processor sharing (DPS) scheduling. The arrival process of each class customers is the Poisson process and the service requirement of a customer is exponentially distributed. The reneging rate of a customer is a constant. To analyze the performance of the system, we develop a time scale decomposition approach to approximate the joint queue-length distribution of each class customers. Via a numerical experiment, we show that the time scale decomposition approach gives a fairly good approximation of the queue-length distribution and the expected queue length.     

Bayesian Inference for Assessing Effects of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing has been an increasingly important tool for today’s businesses. In this article, we propose a counting-process-based Bayesian method for quantifying the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns in conjunction with customer characteristics. Our model explicitly addresses the seasonality of data, accounts for the impact of customer characteristics on their purchasing behavior, and evaluates effects of email offers as well as their interactions with customer characteristics. Using the proposed method, together with a propensity-score-based unit-matching technique for alleviating potential confounding, we analyze a large email marketing dataset of an online ticket marketplace to evaluate the short- and long-term effectiveness of their email campaigns. It is shown that email offers can increase customer purchase rate both immediately and during a longer term. Customers’ characteristics such as length of shopping history, purchase recency, average ticket price, average ticket count, and number of genres purchased also affect customers’ purchase rate. A strong positive interaction is uncovered between email offer and purchase recency, suggesting that customers who have been inactive recently are more likely to take advantage of promotional offers. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Simultaneous arrival of customers to two different queues and modeling dependence via copula approach

ABSTRACT

In classical queueing systems, a customer is allowed to wait only in one queue to receive the service. In practice, when there exist a number of queues rendering the same service, some customers may tend to simultaneously take turn in more than one queue with the aim to receive the service sooner and thus reduce their waiting time. In this article, we introduce such a model and put forward a methodology to deal with the situation. In this regard, we consider two queues and assume that if a customer, who has turn in both queues, receives the service from one of the queues, the other turn is automatically withdrawn. This circumstance for the model brings about some abandonment in each queue as some customers receive the service from the other one. We study the customer’s waiting time in the mentioned model, which is defined as the minimum of waiting times in both queues and obtain probability density function of this random variable. Our approach to obtain probability density function of each of the waiting time random variables is to rely on the existing results for the abandonment case. We examine the situation for the cases of independence and dependence of the waiting time random variables. The latter is treated via a copula approach.     

Support Vector Clustering for Customer Segmentation on Mobile TV Service

This article presents a proposal for customer segmentation through Support Vector Clustering, a technique that has been gaining attention in the academic literature due to the good results usually obtained. An application of this method to a sample from consumers in Brazil about mobile TV service is performed; we compare this approach with the classical hierarchical methods of cluster analysis. It is concluded that this methodology is effective in reducing the heterogeneity often present in customers’ data, improving the cluster segmentation analysis for managers.     

The rate of convergence to stationarity for M/G/1 models with admission controls via coupling

We study the workload processes of two M/G/1 queueing systems with restricted capacity: in Model 1 any service requirement that would exceed a certain capacity threshold is truncated; in Model 2 new arrivals do not enter the system if they have to wait more than a fixed threshold time in line. For Model 1 we obtain several results concerning the rate of convergence to equilibrium. In particular, we derive uniform bounds for geometric ergodicity with respect to certain subclasses. For Model 2 geometric ergodicity follows from the finiteness of the moment-generating function of the service time distribution. We derive bounds for the convergence rates in special cases. The proofs use the coupling method.     

Availability analysis for general repairable systems with repair time threshold

Availability analysis is an important issue in many practical fields. This paper investigates the availability for general repairable systems with repair time threshold. Based on practical applications, a repair time threshold is introduced. If the period of a repair is less than a predefined time threshold, then the system may be considered as working during this period, i.e., the effect of the repair could be neglected. Otherwise, if the period of a repair is longer than the given threshold, then the system is considered as working from the beginning of the system failure until the repair time exceeding the threshold, i.e., the time point of the system down could be delayed. We consider both constant and random repair time threshold. This paper valuates the user-perceived availability, when the user does not experience any service interruption because the duration of repair is too short. The results can be applied in reliability engineering, queueing theory and many other fields. A numerical example for ventilator system is presented to demonstrate the application of the developed approach.     

A Retrial Queue with a Constant Retrial Rate,Server Downs and Impatient Customers

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we consider a retrial queueing system consisting of a waiting line of infinite capacity in front of a single server subject to breakdowns. A customer upon arrival may join the queue (waiting line) or go to the retrial orbit (another queue) to retry for service after a random time. Only the customer at the head of the retrial orbit is allowed to retry for service. Upon retrial, the customer enters the service if the server is idle; otherwise, it may go back to the retrial orbit or leave the system (become impatient). All the interarrival times, service times, server up times, server down times and retrial times are exponential, and all the necessary independence conditions in these variables are assumed. For this system, we provide sufficient conditions under which, for any given number of customers in the orbit, the stationary probability of the number of customers in the waiting line decays geometrically. We also provide explicitly an expression for the decay parameter.     

POLLING SYSTEMS WITH SIMULTANEOUS BATCH ARRIVALS

We study the delay in polling systems with simultaneous batch arrivals. Arrival epochs are generated according to a Poisson process. At any arrival epoch, batches of customers may arrive simultaneously at the different queues, according to a general joint batch-size distribution. The server visits the queues in cyclic order, the service times and the switch-over times are generally distributed, and the service disciplines are general mixtures of gated and exhaustive service. We derive closed-form expressions for the expected delay at each of the queues when the load tends to unity (under proper scalings), in a general parameter setting. The results are strikingly simple and reveal explicitly how the expected delay depends on the system parameters, and in particular, on the batch-size distributions and the simultaneity of the batch arrivals. Moreover, the results suggest simple and fast-to-evaluate approximations for the expected delay in heavily loaded polling systems. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the approximations are highly accurate in medium and heavily loaded systems.     

ANALYSIS OF A GI/G Y /1 SYSTEM IN DISCRETE-TIME

ABSTRACT

We consider a class of single server queueing systems in which customers arrive singly and service is provided in batches, depending on the number of customers waiting when the server becomes free. Service is independent of the batch size. This system could also be considered as a batch service queue in which a server visits the queue at arbitrary times and collects a batch of waiting customers for service, or waits for a customer to arrive if there are no waiting customers. A waiting server immediately collects and processes the first arriving customer. The system is considered in discrete time. The interarrival times of customers and the inter-visit times of the server, which we call the service time, have general distributions and are represented as remaining time Markov chains. We analyze this system using the matrix-geometric method and show that the resulting R matrix can be determined explicitly in some special cases and the stationary distributions are known semi-explicitly in some other special cases.     

Analysis of a two incongruent arrivals and services M/G/1 queue with random feedback

A queuing system with two incongruent arrivals and services is considered. Two kinds of customers enter the system by Poisson process and the service times are assumed to have general distribution. After first kind service completion, it may feedback to repeat the first service, leave the system or go to give second service. The same policy is applied for the other kind of customer. All stochastic processes involved in this system are independent. We derive the probability generating function for each kind and for the system that yield the performance measures. Some numerical approaches examined the validity of the results.     

Computational analysis of the queue with working breakdowns and delaying repair under a Bernoulli-schedule-controlled policy

This paper considers a single server queueing system with working breakdowns and delaying repair under a Bernoulli-schedule-controlled policy. At a breakdown instant, the system either goes to repair period immediately with probability p, or continues to provide auxiliary service for the current customers with probability q = 1 ? p. While the system resides in the auxiliary service period, it may go to repair period if there is no customer at the epoch of service completion or the occurrence of breakdown. By using the matrix analytic method and the spectral expansion method, we respectively obtain the steady state distribution to make the straightforward computation of performance measures and the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the stationary sojourn time of an arbitrary customer. In addition, some numerical examples are presented to show the impact of parameters on the performance measures.     

供电服务质量与客户满意关系的实证研究

利用采集于江苏电力的770位用户数据对供电服务质量与用户满意的关系进行了实证研究。研究表明供电服务质量对用户满意影响显著，但不同顾客的影响程度存在差异，研究结果对电力企业管理具有重要意义。     

Estimators based on trimmed Kendall’s tau in multivariate copula models

A common method of estimating the parameters of dependency in multivariate copula models is by maximum likelihood principle, termed as Inference From Marginals (IFM); see Joe (1997)  [13]. To avoid possible misspecification of the marginal distributions, some authors suggest rank-based procedures for estimating the parameters of dependency in a multivariate copula model. A standard approach for this problem is through maximization of the pseudolikelihood, as discussed in Genest et al. (1995)  [9] and Shih and Louis (1995)  [23]. Alternative estimators based on the inversion of two multivariate extensions of Kendall’s tau, due to Kendall and Babington Smith (1940)  [14] and Joe (1990)  [12], were used in Genest et al. (2011)  [10]. In the literature, dependency of data was considered in the whole data space. However, it may be better to divide the data set into two distinct sets, lower and higher than a threshold, and then evaluate the dependency parameters in these sets. In this way, we may have different dependency parameters in these sets which may shed additional light. For example, in drought analysis, precipitation and minimum temperature may be modeled using copulas in which case we can infer that dependency between precipitation and minimum temperature are severe when they are less than a certain threshold. In this paper, after introducing trimmed Kendall’s tau when such a threshold is imposed, we consider modeling dependency using it as a measure. Asymptotic distribution of trimmed Kendall’s tau is also investigated, and a test for the null hypothesis of equality between Kendall’s tau and trimmed Kendall’s tau is constructed. We can use this hypothesis testing procedure for testing the hypothesis that data are dependent before a threshold value and are independent after the threshold. An explicit form of the asymptotic distribution of trimmed Kendall’s tau and of the mentioned test statistic are also derived for some special families of copulas. Finally, the results of a simulation study and an illustrative example are provided.