Two Approximate Approaches for Reliability Evaluation in Large Networks. Comparative Study

This paper deals with the complex problem of reliability evaluation of stochastic networks in which both links and nodes failures are considered, and compares two approximate approaches able to reduce the computation time: a sum of disjoint products (SDP) approach and another based on Monte Carlo simulation. In case of the SDP approach, the reliability is computed based on the minimal paths. In a first stage, only the links of the network are considered, and a ‘multiple variables inversion’ technique for developing the set of minimal paths into a sum of disjoint products is applied. Then, in a second stage, each term of the set of disjoint Iink- products is processed separately taking into consideration the reliability values for both links and adjacent nodes. In case of Monte Carlo simulation, for speeding up the method and reducing the computation time, both minimal paths and cuts are considered. Also, other acceleration techniques are applied.