Parametric sensitivity analysis of FDDI MAC scheme

In the recent past man has created a large number of artificial automatic systems classified as discrete event dynamic systems (DEDS). The operation of such systems depend on a number of discrete events and the time of their occurrences. Any change in the parameters of the system may have different effects on the behaviour of the system. For better understanding and control of such systems it is necessary to have the sensitivity information for the various parameters of the system. In this paper the sensitivity analysis of the parameters of a computer communication and control system using the fibre distributed data interface (FDDI) media access control (MAC) scheme for factory automation is described. The important parameters of such a system are detailed in general and the mathematical dependencies of the parameters for the system under consideration are derived. The sensitivity equations for the performance measures like the latency ratio /spl alpha/, the resource utilisation p, the arrival rate /spl lambda/, the computer process response time (CPRT), and the critical bandwidth C/sub crit/ are obtained and discussed.