A Phase-Type Representation for the Queue Length Distribution of a Semi-Markovian Queue

In this paper we study a broad class of semi-Markovian queues introduced by Sengupta. This class contains many classical queues such as the GI/M/1 queue, SM/MAP/1 queue and others, as well as queues with correlated inter-arrival and service times. Queues belonging to this class are characterized by a set of matrices of size m and Sengupta showed that its waiting time distribution can be represented as a phase-type distribution of order m. For the special case of the SM/MAP/1 queue without correlated service and inter-arrival times the queue length distribution was also shown to be phase-type of order m, but no derivation for the queue length was provided in the general case. This paper introduces an order m² phase-type representation (kappa, K) for the queue length distribution in the general case. Moreover, we prove that the order m² of the distribution cannot be further reduced in general. Examples for which the order is between m and m² are also identified. We derive these results in both discrete and continuous time and also discuss the numerical procedure to compute (kappa, K). Moreover, by combining a result of Sengupta and Ozawa, we provide a simple formula to compute the order m phase-type representation of the waiting time in a MAP/MAP/1 queue without correlated service and inter-arrival times, using the R matrix of a Quasi-Birth-Death Markov chain.