A study of stochastic network with concurrent resources occupancy

Abstract

Network models with resources that are utilized concurrently to process jobs are considered in this thesis. The research on such models is motivated by issues in logistics management and communication systems.The first part of the thesis studies the stability of network with random job arrival and service. We extend the fixed route model to the case with routing. The allocation of capacities of the link in the network is dynamically determined by some allocation policy, which is derived by solving an optimization problem that maximizes some utility function. Using the fluid model approach, we show that the network is stable if the nominal workload offered to each link is within the link capacity.The second part focuses on deriving a booking limit control policy based on a fixed point approximation. When specific to the airline industry, the objective is to optimize the expected revenue subjected to the availability of seats on the flights. In our work, we allow batch passenger arrival. We show that the policy is optimal under certain limit. Another contribution made is to study some updating mechanism for the booking limit.