Customers arrive sequentially at times x1 < x2 < · · · < xn and stay for independent random times Z1, …, Zn > 0. The Z-variables all have the same distribution Q. We are interested in situations where the data are incomplete in the sense that only the order statistics associated with the departure times xi + Zi are known, or that the only available information is the order in which the customers arrive and depart. In the former case we explore possibilities for the reconstruction of the correct matching of arrival and departure times. In the latter case we propose a test for exponentiality.

Durbin (1992) derived a convergent series for the density of the first passage time of a Weiner process to a curved boundary. We show that the successive partial sums of this series can be expressed as the iterates of the standard substitution method for solving an integral equation. The calculation is thus simpler than it first appears. We also show that, under a certain condition, the series converges uniformly. This strengthens Durbin's result of pointwise convergence. Finally, we present a modified procedure, based on scaling, which sometimes works better. These approaches cover some cases that Durbin did not.

In this paper we extend our previous work. We consider the local-time process L of a strong Markov process X, add negative drift to L, and reflect it à la Skorokhod to obtain a process Q. The reflection of X, together with Q, is, in some sense, a macroscopic model for a service system with two priorities. We derive an expression for the joint law of the duration of an excursion, the maximum value of the process on it, and the time between successive excursions. We work with a properly constructed stationary version of the process. Examples are also given in the paper.

We derive an expansion for the (expected) difference between the continuously monitored supremum and evenly monitored discrete maximum over a finite time horizon of a jump diffusion process with independent and identically distributed normal jump sizes. The monitoring error is of the form a 0 / N 1/2 + a 1 / N 3/2 + · · · + b 1 / N + b 2 / N 2 + b 4 / N 4 + · · ·, where N is the number of monitoring intervals. We obtain explicit expressions for the coefficients {a 0, a 1, …, b 1, b 2, …}. In particular, a 0 is proportional to the value of the Riemann zeta function at ½, a well-known fact that has been observed for Brownian motion in applied probability and mathematical finance.

We prove that the first passage time density ρ(t) for an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process X(t) obeying dX = -β Xdt + σdW to reach a fixed threshold θ from a suprathreshold initial condition x0 > θ > 0 has a lower bound of the form ρ(t) > kexp[-pe6βt] for positive constants k and p for times t exceeding some positive value u. We obtain explicit expressions for k, p, and u in terms of β, σ, x0, and θ, and discuss the application of the results to the synchronization of periodically forced stochastic leaky integrate-and-fire model neurons.

In this paper we study first passage times of (reflected) Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes over compound Poisson-type boundaries. In fact, we extend the results of first rendezvous times of (reflected) Brownian motion and compound Poisson-type processes in Perry, Stadje and Zacks (2004) to the (reflected) Ornstein-Uhlenbeck case.

In this paper we consider a general Lévy process X reflected at a downward periodic barrier At and a constant upper barrier K, giving a process VKt=Xt +LAt−LKt. We find the expression for a loss rate defined by lK=ELK1 and identify its asymptotics as K→∞ when X has light-tailed jumps and EX1<0.

We consider several versions of the job assignment problem for an M/M/m queue with servers of different speeds. When there are two classes of customers, primary and secondary, the number of secondary customers is infinite, and idling is not permitted, we develop an intuitive proof that the optimal policy that minimizes the mean waiting time has a threshold structure. That is, for each server, there is a server-dependent threshold such that a primary customer will be assigned to that server if and only if the queue length of primary customers meets or exceeds the threshold. Our key argument can be generalized to extend the structural result to models with impatient customers, discounted waiting time, batch arrivals and services, geometrically distributed service times, and a random environment. We show how to compute the optimal thresholds, and study the impact of heterogeneity in server speeds on mean waiting times. We also apply the same machinery to the classical slow-server problem without secondary customers, and obtain more general results for the two-server case and strengthen existing results for more than two servers.

Consider a discrete-time insurance risk model. Within period i, the net insurance loss is denoted by a real-valued random variable X i . The insurer makes both risk-free and risky investments, leading to an overall stochastic discount factor Y i from time i to time i − 1. Assume that (X i , Y i ), i ∈ N, form a sequence of independent and identically distributed random pairs following a common bivariate Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern distribution with marginal distribution functions F and G. When F is subexponential and G fulfills some constraints in order for the product convolution of F and G to be subexponential too, we derive a general asymptotic formula for the finite-time ruin probability. Then, for special cases in which F belongs to the Fréchet or Weibull maximum domain of attraction, we improve this general formula to be transparent.

We consider a d-dimensional reflected fractional Brownian motion (RFBM) process on the positive orthant S = R+d, with drift r0 ∈ Rd and Hurst parameter H ∈ (½, 1). Under a natural stability condition on the drift vector r0 and reflection directions, we establish a return time result for the RFBM process Z; that is, for some δ, κ > 0, supx∈BEx[τB(δ)] < ∞, where B = {x ∈ S : |x| ≤ κ} and τB(δ) = inf{t ≥ δ : Z(t) ∈ B}. Similar results are known for reflected processes driven by standard Brownian motions, and our result can be viewed as their FBM counterpart. Our motivation for this study is that RFBM appears as a limiting workload process for fluid queueing network models fed by a large number of heavy-tailed ON/OFF sources in heavy traffic.

Web servers have to be protected against overload since overload can lead to a server breakdown, which in turn causes high response times and low throughput. In this paper, a stochastic model for breakdowns of server systems due to overload is proposed and an admission control policy which protects Web servers by controlling the amount and rate of work entering the system is studied. Requests from the clients arrive at the server following a nonhomogeneous Poisson process and each requested job takes a random time to be completed. It is assumed that the breakdown rate of the server depends on the number of jobs which are currently being performed by the server. Based on the proposed model, the reliability function and the breakdown rate function of the server system are derived. Furthermore, the long-run expected number of jobs completed per unit time is derived as the efficiency measure, and the optimal admission control policy which maximizes the efficiency will be discussed.

Denote the Palm measure of a homogeneous Poisson process Hλ with two points 0 and x by P0,x. We prove that there exists a constant μ ≥ 1 such that P0,x(D(0, x) / μ||x||2 ∉ (1 − ε, 1 + ε) | 0, x ∈ C∞) exponentially decreases when ||x||2 tends to ∞, where D(0, x) is the graph distance between 0 and x in the infinite component C∞ of the random geometric graph G(Hλ; 1). We derive a large deviation inequality for an asymptotic shape result. Our results have applications in many fields and especially in wireless sensor networks.

We consider a stochastic differential equation (SDE) with piecewise linear drift driven by a spectrally one-sided Lévy process. We show that this SDE has some connections with queueing and storage models, and we use this observation to obtain the invariant distribution.

We give an efficient method based on minimal deterministic finite automata for computing the exact distribution of the number of occurrences and coverage of clumps (maximal sets of overlapping words) of a collection of words. In addition, we compute probabilities for the number of h-clumps, word groupings where gaps of a maximal length h between occurrences of words are allowed. The method facilitates the computation of p-values for testing procedures. A word is allowed to contain other words of the collection, making the computation more general, but also more difficult. The underlying sequence is assumed to be Markovian of an arbitrary order.

We consider a classical risk model and its diffusion approximation, where the individual claims are reinsured by a reinsurance treaty with deductible b ∈ [0, b̃]. Here b = b̃ means ‘no reinsurance’ and b= 0 means ‘full reinsurance’. In addition, the insurer is allowed to invest in a riskless asset with some constant interest rate m > 0. The cedent can choose an adapted reinsurance strategy {b t } t≥0, i.e. the parameter can be changed continuously. If the surplus process becomes negative, the cedent has to inject additional capital. Our aim is to minimise the expected discounted capital injections over all admissible reinsurance strategies. We find an explicit expression for the value function and the optimal strategy using the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman approach in the case of a diffusion approximation. In the case of the classical risk model, we show the existence of a ‘weak’ solution and calculate the value function numerically.

In this paper we consider an extension of the two-dimensional risk model introduced in Avram, Palmowski and Pistorius (2008a). To this end, we assume that there are two insurers. The first insurer is subject to claims arising from two independent compound Poisson processes. The second insurer, which can be viewed as a different line of business of the same insurer or as a reinsurer, covers a proportion of the claims arising from one of these two compound Poisson processes. We derive the Laplace transform of the time until ruin of at least one insurer when the claim sizes follow a general distribution. The surplus level of the first insurer when the second insurer is ruined first is discussed at the end in connection with some open problems.

Limit theorems are established for some functionals of the distances between two nodes in weighted random b-ary recursive trees. We consider the depth of the nth node and of a random node, the distance between two random nodes, the internal path length, and the Wiener index. As an application, these limit results imply, by an imbedding argument, corresponding limit theorems for further classes of random trees: plane-oriented recursive trees and random linear recursive trees.

We use the properties of the Matuszewska indices to show asymptotic inequalities for hazard rates. We discuss the relation between membership in the classes of dominatedly or extended rapidly varying tail distributions and corresponding hazard rate conditions. Convolution closure is established for the class of distributions with extended rapidly varying tails.

This paper is concerned with the definition and calculation of containment probabilities for emerging disease epidemics. A general multitype branching process is used to model an emerging infectious disease in a population of households. It is shown that the containment probability satisfies a certain fixed point equation which has a unique solution under certain conditions; the case of multiple solutions is also described. The extinction probability of the branching process is shown to be a special case of the containment probability. It is shown that Laplace transform ordering of the severity distributions of households in different epidemics yields an ordering on the containment probabilities. The results are illustrated with both standard epidemic models and a specific model for an emerging strain of influenza.

We consider the problem of estimating the probability that the maximum of a Gaussian process with negative mean and indexed by positive integers reaches a high level, say b. In great generality such a probability converges to 0 exponentially fast in a power of b. Under mild assumptions on the marginal distributions of the process and no assumption on the correlation structure, we develop an importance sampling procedure, called the target bridge sampler (TBS), which takes a polynomial (in b) number of function evaluations to achieve a small relative error. The procedure also yields samples of the underlying process conditioned on hitting b in finite time. In addition, we apply our method to the problem of estimating the tail of the maximum of a superposition of a large number, n, of independent Gaussian sources. In this situation TBS achieves a prescribed relative error with a bounded number of function evaluations as n ↗ ∞. A remarkable feature of TBS is that it is not based on exponential changes of measure. Our numerical experiments validate the performance indicated by our theoretical findings.