On occupation time for on-off processes with multiple off-states

Abstract

The need to model a Markov renewal on-off process with multiple off-states arise in many applications such as economics, physics, and engineering. Characterization of the occupation time of one specific off-state marginally or two off-states jointly is crucial to understand such processes. The exact marginal and joint distributions of the off-state occupation times are derived. The theoretical results are confirmed numerically in a simulation study. A special case when all holding times have Lévy distribution is considered for the possibility of simplification of the formulas.