Some Properties of Polling Systems

This paper examines the properties of single server queueing systems with customers of several types, where the server rotates its effort among the customer classes and serves all the customers that have accumulated for each class before moving on to the next. The paper shows that expressions for the first two moments of the queue lengths, and for the mean waiting times, can be developed from two simple properties of the arrival and service processes. The properties, which include existing models as special cases, seem plausible descriptors of the complex arrival and service processes that arise in the transportation field.