An efficient approximation method for phase-type distributions

The Phase-type(PH) distribution, defined as a distribution of the time until the absorption in a finite continuous-time Markov chain state with one absorbing state, has been widely used for various stochastic modelling. But great computational burdens often make us hesitate to apply PH methods. In this paper, we propose a seemingly efficient approximation method for phase type distributions. We first describe methods to bound the first passage time distribution in continuous-time Markov chains. Next, we adapt these bounding methods to approximate phase-tupe distributions. Numerical computation results are given to verify their efficiency.