JPL's Wireless Communication Reference Website

Chapter: Cellular Telephone Networks
Section: Performance Analysis, Telephone Traffic Analysis

Erlang C

Call Queueing

In an Erlang-C telephone system, N channels are available. New calls are assigned a channel until all channels are full. Whenever all channels are occupied, a new call is queued until it can be served. This in contrast to an Erlang-B system, in which new calls are blocked.

Model

New calls arrive according to Poisson process with rate calls per unit of time. Calls have a (memoryless) exponential duration with mean 1/mu. The number of active calls is a Markov process.


Figure: Markov model for number of occupied channels in a network with N channels.

Exercise

Explain the transition rates the above Markov chain.
Why is the rate of going from state i to i-1 equal to

Exercise

Compute the state probabilities and the call queuing probability.

Show that the probability of delaying a call is 

         A^N        1
P    =   ---   ------------
          N!     1 - A/N
where A is the offered traffic expressed in erlang (/mu)


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