edited by Guy Latouche (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) & Peter Taylor (The University of Melbourne, Australia)

Matrix-analytic methods are fundamental to the analysis of a family of Markov processes rich in structure and of wide applicability. They are extensively used in the modelling and performance analysis of computer systems, telecommunication networks, network protocols and many other stochastic systems of current commercial and engineering interest.

This volume deals with: (1) various aspects of the theory of block-structured Markov chains; (2) analysis of complex queueing models; and (3) parameter estimation and specific applications to such areas as cellular mobile systems, FS-ALOHA, the Internet and production systems.

• A New Algorithm for Computing the Rate Matrix of GI/M/1 Type Markov Chain (A S Alfa et al.)
• Decay Rates of Discrete Phase-Type Distributions with Infinitely-Many Phases (N Bean & B F Nielsen)
• Distributions of Reward Functions on Continuous-Time Markov Chains (M Bladt et al.)
• Further Results on the Similarity between Fluid Queues and QBDs (A da Silva Soares & G Latouche)
• Penalised Maximum Likelihood Estimation of the Parameters in a Coxian Phase-Type Distribution (M Faddy)
• MAP/Ph/1 Queues with Level-Dependent Feedback and Their Departure Processes (D Green)
• Matrix Geometric Solution of Fluid Stochastic Petri Nets (A Horváth & M Gribaudo)
• A Markovian Point Process Exhibiting Multifractal Behavior and Its Application to Traffic Modeling (A Horváth & M Telek)
• Application of the Factorization Property to the Analysis of Production Systems with a Non-Renewal Input, Bilevel Threshold Control, Setup Time and Maintenance (H W Lee et al.)
• Analysis of Parallel-Server Queues under Spacesharing and Timesharing Disciplines (J Sethuraman & M S Squillante)
• Robustness of FS-ALOHA (B van Houdt & C Blondia)
• and other papers