Sum of disjoint product approach for reliability evaluation of stochastic flow networks

Computer and telecommunication networks are stochastic in nature, as each node and arc may have multiple capacity states besides complete failure. Various two-terminal reliability estimation algorithms for such stochastic flow networks are available in literature. These algorithms generate d-minimal cuts from minimal cut-sets of the network, where d is required demand. Different techniques are available in literature to evaluate exact reliability from such d-minimal cuts such as the recursive inclusion–exclusion method. The recursive inclusion–exclusion method has certain redundant computations while evaluating network reliability. This paper proposes a sum of disjoint products technique to minimize redundant computations in exact reliability computation from flow vectors. MATLAB simulation is performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method and compare it with the existing methods for benchmark networks available in literature. Simulation results show that the proposed method require lesser computational efforts and memory. © 2017, The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden.