An intermittently served discrete time queue with applications to meteor scatter communications

A discrete time single server queue with service interruptions is analyzed in the steady-state under general assumptions. The main motivation for the study is the performance evaluation of a communication protocol using ionized layers created by meteors. The analysis yields the joint distribution of the queue size and the remaining duration of the current operative or inoperative period. The solution takes a particularly simple form in the case where the operative periods have a rational generating function. © 1988 J.C. Baltzer A.G. Scientific Publishing Company.