English

Fast Engset computation

Numerical Analysis 2016-05-04 v4

Abstract

The blocking probability of a finite-source bufferless queue is a fixed point of the Engset formula, for which we prove existence and uniqueness. Numerically, the literature suggests a fixed point iteration. We show that such an iteration can fail to converge and is dominated by a simple Newton's method, for which we prove a global convergence result. The analysis yields a new Tur\'an-type inequality involving hypergeometric functions, which is of independent interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.00291,
  title  = {Fast Engset computation},
  author = {Parsiad Azimzadeh and Tommy Carpenter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.00291},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables. Error in statement of Lemma 11 in [v2] fixed. Error in proof of Lemma 2 in [v3] fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:34:11.448Z