Belief Connection Reliability Algorithm for Networks With Epistemic Uncertainty

Connection reliability, which describes the capability that paths exist between specified nodes in a network, has been widely studied. However, the states of both the network and its nodes/edges have epistemic uncertainty owing to the lack of data and information, which makes existing connection reliability assessment methods unacceptable. To solve this problem, this article proposes a new connection reliability based on uncertainty theory: Belief connection reliability. Considering different node connection requirements, we define two belief connection reliability metrics as single-node-pair belief connection reliability (SBCR) and multi-node-pair belief connection reliability (MBCR). Based on the uncertain graph, an extended uncertain graph is built to model networks whose nodes and edges' existence has epistemic uncertainty, and two algorithms are proposed to compute SBCR and MBCR based on finding the most reliable connection path. Finally, a comparison study on a small network is used to illustrate the correctness of the proposed method, and the Belgian telephone interzonal network is used as a case to indicate the effectiveness of our network model and algorithms.