Jamming transition in traffic flow under the priority queuing protocol

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University - Seoul 151-747, South Korea

Corresponding author: bkahng@snu.ac.kr

Received: 11 January 2009
Accepted: 14 May 2009

Abstract

Packet traffic in complex networks undergoes the jamming transition from free-flow to congested state as the number of packets in the system increases. Here we study such jamming transition when queues are operated by the priority queuing protocol and packets are guided by the dynamic routing protocol. We introduce a minimal model in which there are two types of packets distinguished by whether priority is assigned. Based on numerical simulations, we show that traffic is improved in the congested region under the priority queuing protocol, and it is worsened in the free-flow region. Also, we find that at the transition point, the waiting-time distribution follows a power law, and the power spectrum of traffic exhibits a crossover between two behaviors with two different exponents α < 2 in low- and high-frequency regime, respectively. This crossover is originated from a characteristic waiting time of packets in the queue.