An approximation method for queues in series with blocking

Abstract

An approximation method for the analysis of queues in series with exponential servers, Poisson arrivals and blocking, is presented. The analysis considers cells consisting of three nodes with revised arrival and service processes. A recursive scheme is developed for the calculation of the steady state probability distributions of the number of items/customers at each node, and also the joint steady state probability distributions of the number of items for triplets of nodes are provided. This approximation method seems to yield encouraging results when compared with those obtained by the other methods and simulation.