Heavy Traffic Analysis of Polling Systems in Tandem.

We analyze the performance of a tandem, queueing network populated by two customer types. The interarrival times of each type and the service times of each type at each station are independent random variables with general distributions. A setup time is incurred when a server switches from one customer type to the other, and each server employs an exhaustive polling scheme. We assume that the load on each station is identical, and employ heavy traffic approximations to compute the sojourn time distribution for a customer that arrives to find the network in a particular state. When setup times are zero (except perhaps at the first station) and additional "product-form" type assumptions are imposed, we find the steady state sojourn time distribution for each customer type.