Mean field approximation is a powerful tool to study the performance of large stochastic systems that is known to be exact as the system’s size N goes to infinity. Recently, it has been shown that, when one wants to compute expected performance metric in steady-state, mean field approximation can be made more accurate by adding a term in 1/N to the original approximation. This is called the refined mean field approximation in [7]. In this paper, we show how to obtain the same result for the transient regime and we provide a further refinement by expanding the term in 1/N 2 (both for transient and steady-state regime). Our derivations are inspired by moment-closure approximation. We provide a number of examples that show this new approximation is usable in practice for systems with up to a few tens of dimensions.

Size expansions of mean field approximation: Transient and steady-state analysis

Tribastone M.
2019-01-01

Abstract

Mean field approximation is a powerful tool to study the performance of large stochastic systems that is known to be exact as the system’s size N goes to infinity. Recently, it has been shown that, when one wants to compute expected performance metric in steady-state, mean field approximation can be made more accurate by adding a term in 1/N to the original approximation. This is called the refined mean field approximation in [7]. In this paper, we show how to obtain the same result for the transient regime and we provide a further refinement by expanding the term in 1/N 2 (both for transient and steady-state regime). Our derivations are inspired by moment-closure approximation. We provide a number of examples that show this new approximation is usable in practice for systems with up to a few tens of dimensions.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11771/16529
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