Example: Analysis of a finite buffer communication system

Consider a communication system consisting of a buffer with finite capacity and multiple
transmission channels. Messages arrive at the buffer according to a Poisson process with rate !.
The messages are first stored in the buffer, which has only capacity for N messages. Each
message which finds upon arrival that the buffer is full, is lost and does not influence the system.
Such an arrival is called a buffer overflow. At fixed clock times ! ! !! !! !! !, messages are
taken out from the buffer and are synchronously transmitted. Each transmission channel can
transmit only one message at a time. The transmission time is constant and equals one time unit
for each message. There are ! transmission channels and so at most ! messages can
synchronously be transmitted. The transmission of a message can only start at a clock time, so
that a message which finds upon arrival in the buffer that a transmission line is idle, will have to
wait until the subsequent clock time.
For ! ! !! !! !!
!
!
! probability that ! messages arrive during one time unit
! !
!!
!
!
!!

Define
!
!
! the number of the messages in the buffer at clock time !
just prior to transmission