Stochastic Networks and Parallel Simulations

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The major objective of this research is to develop models for the performance evaluation of manufacturing and communications networks. The focus will be on modeling "intelligent" networks with dependent nodes, congestion-dependent routing, and concurrent movements of units. Such networks typically have routing of units to avoid congestion, routing constraints due to physical capacities or workload balancing, dynamically increasing or decreasing the processing rate at a node whenever downstream nodes are starved congested, parallel processing among several nodes, splitting and merging of units, concurrent movement or batch processing of units, and sharing of resources (tools, computer files) to do processing. The researchers intend to develop a large class of "partially balanced" network processes that incorporate the dependencies, which cannot be handled by the existing theory of Jackson and quasi-reversible processes, as they deal only with independent nodes and routings. The work involves characterizing the equilibrium behavior of partially balanced network processes and developing subclasses of these processes with specific network topologies, node dependencies and flow controls that arise in manufacturing and communications.