RELIABILITY OF A CLASS OF MULTISTAGE INTERCONNECTION NETWORKS

This paper considers the reliability of extra-stage interconnection networks. Three types of reliability are analyzed. These are the terminal reliability, which is the probability that at least one fault-free path exists between a given input-output pair; the network reliability, which is the probability that at least one fault-free path exists between every input-output pair; and the broadcast reliability, which is the probability that at least one fault-free path exists between a given input and all outputs. A recursive expression for the broadcast reliability is obtained. Also, tight bounds aSre derived for the network reliability: The numerical results indicate that for practical networks (i.e., when network reliability is at least 0.5) the difference between our upper bound and our lower bound is no more than 2% of the lower bound.