Erlang B Formula

NOTATIONS

Pn = Steady-state probability of having n customers in the system

=Arrival rate (inverse of average inter arrival time)
= Service rate (inverse of average service time)
N = Average number of customers in the system
NQ =Average number of customers waiting in queue
T = Average customer time in the system
W =Average customer waiting time in queue (does not include service time)
X=Average service time
X2 = Second moment of service time

=
Consider a system which is identical to the M /M /m system except that if
an arrival finds all m servers busy, it does not enter the system and is lost
instead; the last m in the M/M /m/m notation indicates the limit on the number
of customers in the system. This model is in wide use in telephony (and also,
more generally, in circuit switched networks). In this context, customers in the
system correspond to active telephone conversations and the m servers represent
a single transmission line consisting of m circuits. The average service time 1/
is the average duration of a telephone conversation. The principal quantity of
interest here is the blocking probability, that is, the steady-state probability that
all circuits are busy, in which case an arriving call is refused service. Note that
in an M / M /m/m-based model, the assumption is that blocked calls are lost (not
reattempted). This is in contrast with an M / M /m-based model, where the
assumption is that blocked calls continuously reattempt admission into service.
In data networks, the M/M /m/m system can be used as a model where arrivals

correspond to requests for virtual circuit connections between two nodes and the
maximum number of virtual circuits allowed is m.
The probability that an arrival will find all m servers busy and will therefore be
lost is,

This equation is known as the Erlang B formula and finds wide use in
evaluating the blocking probability

Erlang C Formula
We usually express the performance measures of M/M/m systems in terms of a
probability called delay probability or queuing probability, because this
probability is widely used in designing telephony systems. It corresponds to the
situation in classical telephony where no trunk is available for an arriving call.
Its tabulated results are readily available and hence other parameters can be
easily calculated.
i.

The probability of delay

This is the probability that an arriving customer finds all servers busy and is
forced to wait in the queue. This situation occurs when there are more than m
customers in the system, hence we have

This probability is often referred to as the Erlang C formula or the Erlang

Delay formula and is often written as C(/, m). Most of the parameters of
interest can be expressed in terms of this probability
ii.

As the probability mass function Pk consists of two functions, it is easier

to first find Nq, the number of customers waiting in the queue, instead of
N so that the discontinuity in pmf can be avoided:

iii.

The time spent in the waiting queue:

iv.

The time spends in the queuing system:

v.

The number of customers in the queuing system:

Applications of Erlang Formulae

1. A telephone company establishes a direct connection between two cities
expecting Poisson traffic with rate 30 calls/min. The durations of calls are
independent and exponentially distributed with mean 3 min. Inter arrival
times are independent of call durations. How many circuits should the
company provide to ensure that an attempted call is blocked (because all
circuits are busy) with probability less than 0.01? It is assumed that blocked
calls are lost (i.e., a blocked call is not attempted again).
Ans: We have here an M/M/m/m system where m is the number of
circuits provided by the company. Therefore we must find the smallest m for
which
Pm < 0.01 where Pm is given by the Erlang B formula

We have = 30 and = 1/3, so / = 303 =90. By substitution in the

equation above we can calculate the required value of m
2. A trading company is installing a new 300-line PBX to replace its old
existing over-crowded one. The new PBX will have a group of two-way
external circuits and the outgoing and incoming calls will be split equally
among them. It has been observed from past experience that each internal
telephone usually generated (call or receive) 20 minutes of voice traffic
during a typical busy day. How many external circuits are required to ensure
a blocking probability of 0.02?
Solution
In order for the new PBX to handle the peak load during a typical busy
hour, we assume that the busy hour traffic level constitutes about 14% of a
busy days traffic. Hence the total traffic presented to the PBX:
= 300 20 14% 60
= 14erlangs
The calculated traffic c load does not account for the fact that trunks are tied
up during call setups and uncompleted calls. Let us assume that these
amount to an overhead factor of 10%. Then the adjusted traffic
= 14 (1 + 10%) = 15.4erlangs

Using the Erlang B formula:

Again, we solve it by trying various numbers for m and we have

m=22 Pm= 0 0254
m=23 Pm= 0 0164
Therefore, a total of 23 lines is needed to have a blocking probability of less
than or equal to 0.02.