Optimal admission control in two-class preemptive loss systems

Abstract

We study optimal admission control in a two-class preemptive loss system. A class-1 customer arrival aborts service of a class-2 customer if the system is full upon arrival. Each successfully serviced class-2 customer leads to a reward, whereas each aborted class-2 customer incurs a cost. Using dynamic programming, we characterize optimal admission control for class-2 customers that maximizes the long-run average profit. The optimal admission control policy depends only on the total occupancy and is of threshold type.