Equilibrium Probability Calculations for a Discrete-Time Bulk Queue Model

Many problems in management science and telecommunications can be solved by the analysis of a D/D/1 queueing model. In this paper, we use the zeros, both inside and outside the unit circle, of the denominator of the generating function of the model to obtain an explicit closed-form solution for the equilibrium probabilities of the number of customers in the system. The moments of the number of customers in the queue or in the system are also studied. When there are infinitely many zeros outside the unit circle, we propose an approximation method using polynomials. This method yields correct values for a finite number of the probabilities, the number depending on the degree of the polynomial approximation.