M/GI/1 queues with services of both positive and negative customers

Abstract

We consider an M/GI/1 queue with two types of customers, positive and negative, which cancel each other out. The server provides service to either a positive customer or a negative customer. In such a system, the queue length can be either positive or negative and an arrival either joins the queue, if it is of the same sign, or instantaneously removes a customer of the opposite sign at the end of the queue or in service. This study is a generalization of Gelenbe's original concept of a queue with negative customers, where only positive customers need services and negative customers arriving at an empty system are lost or need no service. In this paper, we derive the transient and the stationary probability distributions for the major performance measures in terms of generating functions and Laplace transforms. It has been shown that the previous results for the system with negative arrivals of zero service time are special cases of our model. In addition, we obtain the stationary waiting time distribution of this system in terms of a Laplace transform.