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In this paper, we analyze a model called the k-nearest neighbor queue with the possibility of having delayed queue length feedback. We prove fluid limits for the stochastic queueing model and show that the fluid limit converges to a system of delay differential equations. Using the properties of circulant matrices, we derive a closed form expression for the value of the critical delay, which governs whether the delayed information will induce oscillations or a Hopf bifurcation in our queueing system.

 

It is already well-understood that many delay differential equations with only a single constant delay exhibit a change in stability according to the value of the delay in relation to a critical delay value. Finding a formula for the critical delay is important to understanding the dynamics of delayed systems and is often simple to obtain when the system only has a single constant delay. However, if we consider a system with multiple constant delays, there is no known way to obtain such a formula that determines for what values of the delays a change in stability occurs. In this paper, we present some single-delay approximations to a multidelay system obtained via a Taylor expansion as well as formulas for their critical delays which are used to approximate where the change in stability occurs in the multidelay system. We determine when our approximations perform well and we give extra analytical and numerical attention to the two-delay and three-delay settings. 

Many service systems provide customers with information about the system so that customers can make an informed decision about whether to join or not. Many of these systems provide information in the form of an update. Thus, the information about the system is updated periodically in increments of size [Formula: see text]. It is known that these updates can cause oscillations in the resulting dynamics. However, it is an open problem to explicitly characterize the size of these oscillations when they occur. In this paper, we solve this open problem and show how to exactly calculate the amplitude of these oscillations via a fixed point equation. We also calculate closed form approximations via Taylor expansions of the fixed point equation and show that these approximations are very accurate, especially when [Formula: see text] is large. Our analysis provides new insight for systems that use updates as a way of disseminating information to customers. 

Giving customers queue length information about a service system has the potential to influence the decision of a customer to join a queue. Thus, it is imperative for managers of queueing systems to understand how the information that they provide will affect the performance of the system. To this end, we construct and analyze a two-dimensional deterministic fluid model that incorporates customer choice behavior based on delayed queue length information. Reports in the existing literature always assume that all queues have identical parameters and the underlying dynamical system is symmetric. However, in this paper, we relax this symmetry assumption by allowing the arrival rates, service rates, and the choice model parameters to be different for each queue. Our methodology exploits the method of multiple scales and asymptotic analysis to understand how to break the symmetry. We find that the asymmetry can have a large impact on the underlying dynamics of the queueing system. 

Many service systems provide queue length information to customers, thereby allowing customers to choose among many options of service. However, queue length information is often delayed, and it is often not provided in real time. Recent work by Dong et al. [Dong J, Yom-Tov E, Yom-Tov GB (2018) The impact of delay announcements on hospital network coordination and waiting times. Management Sci. 65(5):1969–1994.] explores the impact of these delays in an empirical study in U.S. hospitals. Work by Pender et al. [Pender J, Rand RH, Wesson E (2017) Queues with choice via delay differential equations. Internat. J. Bifurcation Chaos Appl. Sci. Engrg. 27(4):1730016-1–1730016-20.] uses a two-dimensional fluid model to study the impact of delayed information and determine the exact threshold under which delayed information can cause oscillations in the dynamics of the queue length. In this work, we confirm that the fluid model analyzed by Pender et al. [Pender J, Rand RH, Wesson E (2017) Queues with choice via delay differential equations. Internat. J. Bifurcation Chaos Appl. Sci. Engrg. 27(4):1730016-1–1730016-20.] can be rigorously obtained as a functional law of large numbers limit of a stochastic queueing process, and we generalize their threshold analysis to arbitrary dimensions. Moreover, we prove a functional central limit theorem for the queue length process and show that the scaled queue length converges to a stochastic delay differential equation. Thus, our analysis sheds new insight on how delayed information can produce unexpected system dynamics. 

As more people move back into densely populated cities, bike sharing is emerging as an important mode of urban mobility. In a typical bike-sharing system (BSS), riders arrive at a station and take a bike if it is available. After retrieving a bike, they ride it for a while, then return it to a station near their final destinations. Since space is limited in cities, each station has a finite capacity of docks, which cannot hold more bikes than its capacity. In this paper, we study BSSs with stations having a finite capacity. By an appropriate scaling of our stochastic model, we prove a mean-field limit and a central limit theorem for an empirical process of the number of stations with k bikes. The mean-field limit and the central limit theorem provide insight on the mean, variance, and sample path dynamics of large-scale BSSs. We also leverage our results to estimate confidence intervals for various performance measures such as the proportion of empty stations, the proportion of full stations, and the number of bikes in circulation. These performance measures have the potential to inform the operations and design of future BSSs. 

The Last to Enter Service (LES) delay announcement is one of the most commonly used delay announcements in queueing theory because it is quite simple to implement. Recent research has shown that using a convex combination of LES and the conditional mean delay are optimal under the mean squared error and the optimal value depends on the correlation between LES and the virtual waiting time. To this end, we show using simulation that it is important to be careful when using finite queue sizes, especially in a heavy traffic setting. Using simulation we demonstrate that the correlation between LES and the virtual waiting time can differ from heavy traffic results and can therefore have a large impact on the optimal announcement. Finally, we use simulation to assess the value of giving future information in computing correlations with virtual waiting times and show that future information is helpful in some settings.