Cutset enumeration of network systems with link and node failures

Abstract Network reliability analysis has received considerable attention and is thus widely studied to predict and prevent any network failure. However, most of such works presume perfectly reliable nodes. Although a few studies have considered both link and node failures, none of these methods has utilized the minimal paths or cuts, which are considered as fundamental approaches in the network reliability evaluation. An efficient method for deducing the minimal cutsets of a system subject to both link and node failures from the minimal cutsets of the system, which assumes perfect node reliability, is presented. The proposed method does not require re-enumeration of minimal cutsets for the additional consideration of the node failures. For a simple extension of such a method, the proposed approach can be embedded in any exact or approximate algorithm to account for link failures as well as node failures. As a result, the application of this method would be more realistic and valuable in practice for the reliability evaluation of networks with unreliable nodes.