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An analysis of queues with delayed information and time-varying arrival rates

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Abstract

Understanding how delayed information impacts queueing systems is an important area of research. However, much of the current literature neglects one important feature of many queueing systems, namely non-stationary arrivals. Non-stationary arrivals model the fact that customers tend to access services during certain times of the day and not at a constant rate. In this paper, we analyze two two-dimensional deterministic fluid models that incorporate customer choice behavior based on delayed queue length information with time-varying arrivals. In the first model, customers receive queue length information that is delayed by a constant \(\Delta \). In the second model, customers receive information about the queue length through a moving average of the queue length where the moving average window is \(\Delta \). We analyze the impact of a time-varying arrival rate and show using asymptotic analysis that the time-varying arrival rate does not impact the critical delay unless the frequency of the time-varying arrival rate is twice that of the critical delay. When the frequency of the arrival rate is twice that of the critical delay, then the stability is enlarged by a wedge that is determined by the model parameters. As a result, this problem allows us to combine the theory of nonlinear dynamics, parametric excitation, delays, and time-varying queues together to provide insight into the impact of information on queueing systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, 228 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Jamol Pender

  2. Department of Mathematics, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, 535 Malott Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Richard H. Rand

  3. Department of Mathematics, Cornell University, 582 Malott Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Elizabeth Wesson

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  1. Jamol Pender
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  2. Richard H. Rand
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  3. Elizabeth Wesson
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Correspondence to Jamol Pender.

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Pender, J., Rand, R.H. & Wesson, E. An analysis of queues with delayed information and time-varying arrival rates. Nonlinear Dyn 91, 2411–2427 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-017-4021-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-017-4021-0

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