Engineering Calculation of Overflow Probabilities in Buffers with Markov-Interrupted Service

Interrupted service, which may occur in fading radio channels, in low-priority channels which can be preempted or in systems with failures may make severe demands on buffer size if overflow is to be avoided. This paper analyzes a buffer with a Markov-interrupted timeslotted server, generalizing earlier work on independent random interruptions. An equivalent service distribution is defined for use in an approximate model, which in turn gives buffer probabilities and overflow probabilities. For very small overflow probabilities, the necessary buffer size is found from a further analytic approximation to the tail of the buffer size distribution. The accuracy of the two approximations together is good, shown by an example of a fading radio channel.