Delay analysis for a discretionary-priority packet-switching system

We consider a priority-based packet-switching system with three phases of the packet transmission time. Each packet belongs to one of several priority classes, and the packets of each class arrive at a switch in a Poison process. The switch transmits queued packets on a priority basis with three phases of preemption mechanism. Namely, the transmission time of each packet consists of a preemptive-repeat part for the header, a preemptive-resume part for the information field, and a nonpreemptive part for the trailer. By an exact analysis of the associated queueing model, we obtain the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the distribution function for the delay, i.e., the time from arrival to transmission completion, of a packet for each class. We derive a set of equations that calculates the mean response time for each class recursively. Based on this result, we plot the numerical values of the mean response times for several parameter settings. The probability generating function and the mean for the number of packets of each class present in the system at an arbitrary time are also given.