PRIORITY QUEUE WITH DISCOUNTED LINEAR COSTS

A nonpreemptive priority queue with a finite number of priority classes, Poisson arrival processes, and general service time distributions is considered. The economic framework is linear, consisting of a holding cost per unit time and fixed service reward for each customer class. Future costs and rewards are continuously discounted with a positive interest rate. Allowing general initial queue sizes, an expression for the expected present value of rewards received minus costs incurred over an infinite horizon is developed.