On the steady-state probability of delay and large negative deviations for the $GI/GI/n$ queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime

Abstract: We consider the FCFS $GI/GI/n$ queue in the Halfin-Whitt heavy traffic regime, and prove bounds for the steady-state probability of delay (s.s.p.d.) for generally distributed processing times. We prove that there exist $\epsilon_1, \epsilon_2 > 0$, depending on the first three moments of the inter-arrival and processing time distributions, such that the s.s.p.d. is bounded from above by $\exp\big(-\epsilon_1 B^2\big)$ as the associated excess parameter $B \rightarrow \infty$; and by $1 - \epsilon_2 B$ as $B \rightarrow 0$. We also prove that the tail of the steady-state number of idle servers has a Gaussian decay. We provide explicit bounds in all cases, in terms of the first three moments of the inter-arrival and service distributions, and use known results to show that our bounds correctly capture various qualitative scalings. \\indent Our main proof technique is the derivation of new stochastic comparison bounds for the FCFS $GI/GI/n$ queue, which are of a structural nature, hold for all $n$ and times $t$, and significantly generalize the work of \citet{GG.10c} (e.g. by providing bounds for the queue length to exceed any given level, as opposed to any given level strictly greater than the number of servers as acheived in \citet{GG.10c}). Our results do not follow from simple comparison arguments to e.g. infinite-server systems or loss models, which would in all cases provide bounds in the opposite direction.