Queueing networks by negative customers and negative queue lengths

Abstract

A number of papers have recently appeared in the literature in which customers, in moving from node to node in the network arrive as either a positive customer or as a batch of negative customers. A positive customer joining its queue increases the number of customers at the queue by 1 and each negative customer decreases the queue length by 1, if possible. It has been shown that the equilibrium distribution for these networks assumes a geometric product form, that certain partial balance equations prevail and that the parameters of the geometric distributions are, as in Jackson networks, the service facility throughputs of customers. In this paper the previous work is generalised by allowing state dependence into both the service and routing intensities and by allowing the possibility, although not the necessity, for negative customers to build up at the nodes.