An improved sum-of-disjoint-products technique for the symbolic network reliability analysis with known minimal paths

Evaluating the network reliability is an important topic in the planning, designing, and control of systems. The sum-of-disjoint products technique (SDP) is a major fundamental tool for evaluating stochastic network reliability. In this study, a new SDP based on some intuitive properties that characterize the structure of minimal paths (MPs), and the relationships between MPs and subpaths are developed to improved SDP. The proposed SDP is easier to understand and implement, and better than the existing best- known SDP based algorithms under some special situation. The correctness of the proposed algorithm will be analyzed and proven. One bench example is illustrated to show how the network reliability with known MPs is determined using the proposed SDP.