“…The literature abounds with examples of Markov-modulated rate processes. Existing analytical techniques for such systems generally fall into three categories: (1) Exact analysis of systems of relatively small size, Fischer [6] or with a special structure [22], [21], [18], [1], [15], [13], [14], [16], (2) analysis using simplifying approximations (typically approximating the modulating process as uncorrelated), and (3) asymptotic approaches, e.g. [19], [4], [24].…”