A Century-Long Challenge in Teletraffic Theory: Blocking Probability
Evaluation for Overflow Loss Systems with Mutual Overflow
Abstract
In this review, we describe historical and recent developments towards
tackling a century-long challenge in teletraffic theory, namely the
evaluation of blocking probability in overflow systems with mutual
overflow. Such systems have many applications in a variety of
telecommunications and service systems, including wireless
communications, cloud computing, intensive care, and emergency services,
and various methods have been developed over the past century to address
this challenge. In particular, the recent development of the Information
Exchange Surrogate Approximation (IESA) provides significantly increased
accuracy and robustness compared to previous approximation methods of
its kind while also providing high computational efficiency not
available via simulation or exact analysis. To the best of our
knowledge, IESA is the first approximation method to combine high levels
of accuracy, robustness, and computational efficiency when evaluating
blocking probability in overflow systems with mutual overflow, and thus
forms a major breakthrough in this century-long effort.