EXPERIMENT 3

AIM: To study the Erlang C formula for probability of call blocking using MATLAB.
THEORY:
The Erlang C formula expresses the probability that an arriving customer will need to
be queued as opposed to immediately being served. Just as the Erlang B formula,
Erlang C assumes an infinite population of sources, which jointly offer traffic of A
erlangs to N servers. However, if all the servers are busy when a request arrives from
a source, the request is queued. A queue is used to hold all requested calls which
cannot be immediately assigned a channel. An unlimited number of requests may be
held in the queue in this way simultaneously. This formula calculates the probability of
queuing offered traffic, assuming that blocked calls stay in the system until they can
be handled. This formula is used to determine the number of agents or customer
service representatives needed to staff a call centre, for a specified desired probability
of queuing. The Erlang C formula is given by:

Where,

A = total traffic offered (in erlangs)

N = number of servers
PW = probability of waiting

The assumptions made in Erlang C formula are similar to those used for Erlang B
formula, except for the additional stipulation that if an offered call cannot be assigned
a channel, it is placed in a queue which has an infinite length. Each call is then serviced
in the order of its arrival and the arrival process obeys a Poisson distribution. A
common use for Erlang C is in modelling and dimensioning call center agents in a call
center environment.
MATLAB CODE:
Function Code:
function erc = erlang_c1(A,N)
X = (power(A,N)/factorial(N))*(N/(N-A));
sum = 0;
for k=0:N-1
d1 = power(A,k)/factorial(k);
sum = sum + d1;
end
Y = sum + X;
erc = X/Y;

Main Code:
clc;
clear all;
close all;
N = [1:10 15 20:10:100];
A = logspace(-1,2,100);
for i=1:length(N)
for j=1:length(A)
Pw(i,j)= erlang_c1(A(j),N(i));
end
end
loglog(A,Pw);
axis ([0.1 100 0.001 0.1]);
xlabel('Total traffic (A)');
ylabel('Probability of waiting (Pw)');
grid on;

GRAPH:

-1

Probability of waiting (Pw)

10

-2

10

-3

10

-1

10

CONCLUSION:

10

Total traffic (A)

10

10