Integration of Reliability and Capacity in Performance Measure of a Telecommunication Network

Two important characteristics for the performance of a telecommunication network are its reliability and capacity. Previous analytic methods have been used either to determine the reliability or capacity disregarding the other parameter. This leads to erroneous conclusions about the performance of the network. This paper suggests a method to integrate these two important measures by defining a weighted reliability index. The states which lead to at least one available path between the terminal nodes are identified and probability of each of these is multiplied by a normalized weight. The sum of these products is the performance index of the network. An example illustrates the method and thereafter several practical situations are discussed.