abstract
We study load balancing policies for an airport baggage handling system (BHS). The performance of the screening subsystem is important as it can potentially cause traffic congestion of the whole BHS during peak period. Currently, the round-robin (RR) and the first-available (FA) polices are implemented at airports. This paper presents a simulative approach to evaluate the impact of load balancing policies on the system performance. Using discrete-event simulations, airport practitioners can assess the effectiveness of the policies according to the actual layout of a particular passenger terminal. In addition to the RR and FA, a join-shortest-queue (JSQ) policy is introduced. This scheme can be applied jointly with the RR for daily operations. A case study is presented to illustrate the characteristics of this scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the RR-JSQ can replace the existing RR-FA for a better balanced load distribution and improve the overall system performance.
5. Conclusions and future works
All passenger bags entering a BHS are mandatory to go through security inspection in screening area before loaded onto the aircraft. Load balancing policy plays an important role in the performance of screening subsystem. This paper investigated different load balancing policies including the RR, FA and JSQ and a possible combination RR-FA (existing common practice) and RR-JSQ. A G/G/ m/R /FCFS queueing model was adopted. Considering the difficulty and accuracy of mathematical formations, a discrete-event simulation platform was developed based on the model to evaluatepolicies.
