Stability, queue length, and delay of deterministic and stochastic queueing networks

We present two types of stability problems: 1) conditions for queueing networks that render bounded queue lengths and bounded delay for customers, and 2) conditions for queueing networks in which the queue length distribution of a queue has an exponential tail with rate /spl theta/. To answer these two types of stability problems, we introduce two new notions of traffic characterization: minimum envelope rate (MER) and MER with respect to /spl theta/. We also develop a set of rules for network operations such as superposition, input-output relation of a single queue, and routing. Specifically, we show that: 1) the MER of a superposition process is less than or equal to the sum of the MER of each process, 2) a queue is stable in the sense of bounded queue length if the MER of the input traffic is smaller than the capacity, 3) the MER of a departure process from a stable queue is less than or equal to that of the input process, and 4) the MER of a routed process from a departure process is less than or equal to the MER of the departure process multiplied by the MER of the routing process. Similar results hold for MER with respect to /spl theta/ under a further assumption of independence. For single class networks with nonfeedforward routing, we provide a new method to show that similar stability results hold for such networks under the first come, first served policy. Moreover, when restricting to the family of two-state Markov modulated arrival processes, the notion of MER with respect to /spl theta/ is shown to be equivalent to the recently developed notion of effective bandwidth in communication networks.>