An alternative approach to the exact network reliability assessment through the quickest path

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for assessing network reliability that does not require pre-identifying all minimal paths, simplifying the process of ensuring data transmission within time constraints.

Contribution

The proposed approach eliminates the need for prior minimal path enumeration, offering a more straightforward and potentially more efficient way to evaluate network reliability.

Findings

The algorithm is correct and validated through an example.

It avoids the computational complexity of listing all minimal paths.

The method is applicable to networks with time and data transmission constraints.

Abstract

Extending the quickest path problem to the network reliability, a new problem emerged which aims to assess the network reliability for transmitting at least d units of data from a source node to a sink node through one minimal path (MP) within given T units of time. Many of the proposed approaches in the literature check all the MPs of the network for doing the job and then construct desired system state vectors based on the accepted MPs. Hence, they need to have all the MPs of the network in advance. Here, we propose a simple approach that does not need any MP in advance. The algorithm is shown to be corrected and is illustrated through an example.