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Bounds and Approximations for the Transient Behavior of Continuous-Time Markov Chains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2009

Bok Sik Yoon
Affiliation:
Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research University of California Berkeley, California, 94720
J. George Shanthikumar
Affiliation:
School of Business Administration University of California Berkeley, California, 94720

Extract

Discretization is a simple, yet powerful tool in obtaining time-dependent probability distribution of continuous-time Markov chains. One of the most commonly used approaches is uniformization. A recent addition to such approaches is an external uniformization technique. In this paper, we briefly review these different approaches, propose some new approaches, and discuss their performances based on theoretical bounds and empirical computational results. A simple method to get lower and upper bounds for first passage time distribution is also proposed.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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