Real-time distributed program reliability analysis

Distributed program reliability has been proposed as a reliability index for distributed computing systems to analyze the probability of the successful execution of a program, task, or mission in the system. However, current reliability models proposed for distributed program reliability evaluation do not capture the effects of real-time constraints. We propose an approach to the reliability analysis of distributed programs that addresses real-time constraints. Our approach is based on a model for evaluating transmission time, which allow us to find the time needed to complete execution of the program, task, or mission under evaluation. With information on time-constraints, the corresponding Markov state space can then be defined for reliability computation. To speed up the evaluation process and reduce the size of the Markov state space, several dynamic reliability-preserving reductions are developed. A simple distributed real-time system is used as an example to illustrate the feasibility and uniqueness of the proposed approach