Availability assessment of a telecommunications system with permanent and intermittent faults

This paper presents a mathematical model for assessing the availability of a non-redundant telecommunications system, which is continuously tested during operation. The types of faults that can occur in such systems are defined as permanent and intermittent faults. Mathematical equations are derived to calculate the mean times spent by the system in the operable and repair states using the properties of the regenerative process. The availability expression is derived under arbitrary fault distributions. Numerical example illustrates the impact of the faults rate on the system availability under exponential distribution of faults.