Analysis of Dependence Effects in Telephone Trunking Networks

Abstract

Since theoretical and computational difficulties often preclude exact solution of telephone trunking network problems, approximate methods are naturally used. A typical approach is to determine link <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∗</sup> blocking probabilities and from them calculate point-to-point blocking probabilities by invoking independence assumptions. Although the link blocking probabilities may be quite accurate, the point-to-point blocking probability calculations will, in some cases, suffer from the independence assumptions. This paper presents a method of taking dependence into account for certain networks by approximating conditional probabilities which reflect the dependence. The approximations avoid the problems of dealing with the large sums associated with this problem.