Invariant measures and error bounds for random walks in the quarter-plane based on sums of geometric terms

Abstract

We consider homogeneous random walks in the quarter-plane. The necessary conditions which characterize random walks of which the invariant measure is a sum of geometric terms are provided in Chen et al. (arXiv:1304.3316, 2013, Probab Eng Informational Sci 29(02):233---251, 2015). Based on these results, we first develop an algorithm to check whether the invariant measure of a given random walk is a sum of geometric terms. We also provide the explicit form of the invariant measure if it is a sum of geometric terms. Second, for random walks of which the invariant measure is not a sum of geometric terms, we provide an approximation scheme to obtain error bounds for the performance measures. Our results can be applied to the analysis of two-node queueing systems. We demonstrate this by applying our results to a tandem queue with server slow-down.