Reliability of Multi-Dimensional Network Systems with Nodes Having Stochastic Connection Ranges

This paper proposes a reliability evaluation model for a multidimensional network system, which has potential to be applied to the internet of things or other practical networks. A multidimensional network system with one source element and multiple sink elements is considered first. Each element can connect with other elements within a stochastic connection ranges. The system is regarded as successful as long as the source element remains connected with all sink elements. An importance measure is proposed to evaluate the performance of non-source elements. Furthermore, to calculate the system reliability and the element importance measure, a multi-valued decision diagram based approach is structured and its complexity is analyzed. Finally, a numerical example about the signal transfer station system is illustrated to analyze the system reliability and the element importance measure.