A matrix-analytic solution for the DBMAP/PH/1 priority queue

Abstract Priority queueing models have been commonly used in telecommunication systems. The development of analytically tractable models to determine their performance is vitally important. The discrete time batch Markovian arrival process (DBMAP ) has been widely used to model the source behavior of data traffic, while phase-type (PH) distribution has been extensively applied to model the service time. This paper focuses on the computation of the DBMAP/PH/1 queueing system with priorities, in which the arrival process is considered to be a DBMAP with two priority levels and the service time obeys a discrete PH distribution. Such a queueing model has potential in performance evaluation of computer networks such as video transmission over wireless networks and priority scheduling in ATM or TDMA networks. Based on matrix-analytic methods, we develop computation algorithms for obtaining the stationary distribution of the system numbers and further deriving the key performance indices of the DBMAP/PH/1 priority queue.