A quick BAT for evaluating the reliability of binary-state networks

• Published in: Reliability engineering & system safety Vol. 216; p. 107917
• Main Author: Yeh, Wei-Chang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Barking Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Algorithms; Binary decision diagram (BDD); Binary-addition-tree algorithm (BAT); Binary-state network; Mathematical analysis; Motivation; Network reliability; Performance evaluation; Reliability analysis; Reliability engineering; Super vectors; System reliability; Vectors (mathematics); Binary-addition-tree algorithm (BAT); Binary decision diagram (BDD); Network reliability; Binary-state network; Super vectors
• ISSN: 0951-8320; 1879-0836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2021.107917

Network structures and models have been widely adopted, and many are based on the binary-state network. Reliability is the most commonly used tool to evaluate network performance. Efficient algorithms to evaluate binary-state network reliability are continually being developed. The motivation of this study is to propose an efficient algorithm called the quick BAT to evaluate binary-state network reliability. The propose quick BAT is based on the binary-addition tree algorithm (BAT) and employs three novel concepts: the first connected vector, the last disconnected vector, and super vectors. These super vectors narrow the search space and the calculations of their occurrent probabilities simplify the probability calculations to reduce the run time of the algorithm. Moreover, we show that replacing each undirected arc with two directed arcs, which is required in traditional direct methods, is unnecessary in the proposed algorithm. We call this novel concept the undirected vectors. The advantage and performance of the proposed quick BAT algorithm was verified experimentally by solving 20 benchmark problems and compared to the binary decision diagram (BDD), quick inclusion–exclusion technology (QIE), and BAT.