A multiserver retrial queue: regenerative stability analysis

Abstract

We consider a multiserver retrial GI/G/m queue with renewal input of primary customers, interarrival time τ with rate $\lambda=1/\mathsf{E}\tau$ , service time S, and exponential retrial times of customers blocked in the orbit. In the model, an arriving primary customer enters the system and gets a service immediately if there is an empty server, otherwise (if all m servers are busy) he joins the orbit and attempts to enter the system after an exponentially distributed time. Exploiting the regenerative structure of the (non-Markovian) stochastic process representing the total number of customers in the system (in service and in orbit), we determine stability conditions of the system and some of its variations. More precisely, we consider a discrete-time process embedded at the input instants and prove that if $\rho=:\lambda\mathsf{E}S<m$ and $\mathsf{P}(\tau>S)>0$ , then the regeneration period is aperiodic with a finite mean. Consequently, this queue has a stationary distribution under the same conditions as a standard multiserver queue GI/G/m with infinite buffer. To establish this result, we apply a renewal technique and a characterization of the limiting behavior of the forward renewal time in the (renewal) process of regenerations. The key step in the proof is to show that the service discipline is asymptotically work-conserving as the orbit size increases. Included are extensions of this stability analysis to continuous-time processes, a retrial system with impatient customers, a system with a general retrial rate, and a system with finite buffer for waiting primary customers. We also consider the regenerative structure of a multi-dimensional Markov process describing the system.