A mesh network reliability analysis using reliability block diagram

Abstract

Currently, numerous wireless networks had been developed providing various services to promote improved communication quality in our daily lives. The problem of system and network reliability in providing stable services has become more important because these services will be terminated if the system and network reliability is unstable. Mesh networks is one of important topologies in wireless networks. The paper proposes a model for mesh network and analyzes its reliability for stable services. In the star or tree networks, a series system and the reliability block diagram (RBD) technique can be used to solve their reliability problem but it is difficult for mesh networks due to its irregular property. However, a division technology is applied here to overcome the problem to divide a mesh network into several star or tree networks. A mesh network using division technology is classified into several non-reducible series systems and edge parallel systems. Hence, the reliability of mesh networks is easily solved using series-parallel systems through our proposed scheme. The numerical results demonstrate that the reliability will increase for mesh networks when the number of edges in parallel systems increases while the reliability quickly drops when the number of edges and the number of nodes increase for all three networks.