Reliability assessment of stochastic networks with ER connectivity and ER dependency

Abstract

In stochastic networks, nodes usually function dependently and interact with other nodes through connectivity links or dependency links. In this paper, the model for stochastic networks considering sub-networks with connectivity and dependency links of Erdös-Rényi (ER) topology is proposed, which is defined as networks with arbitrary pair of nodes randomly connected/depended by a constant probability. The reliability evaluation framework for the proposed networks is developed, where both of the extended multi-valued decision diagram (MDD) method and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) are involved. The MDD method is proposed to assess the reliability of deterministic stochastic networks with ER connectivity and dependency, where arbitrary time to failure distributions of nodes are allowed. Based on the reliability evaluation for a stochastic network with a deterministic structure, the MCS is employed to achieve the reliability analysis of corresponding stochastic networks. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the proposed stochastic network model and reliability evaluation framework, where the probability distributions for the reliability of stochastic networks are provided.