ESTIMATION OF NETWORK RELIABILITY USING GRAPH EVOLUTION MODELS

Monte Carlo techniques for estimating various network reliability characteristics, including terminal connectivity, are developed by assuming that edges are subject to failures with arbitrary probabilities and nodes are absolutely reliable. The core of our approach is introducing network time-evolution processes and using certain graph-theoretic machinery resulting in a considerable increase in accuracy for Monte Carlo estimates, especially for highly reliable networks. Simulation strategies and numerical results are presented and discussed.