A set theory based method to derive network reliability expressions of complex system topologies

Network reliability evaluation is important for the planning, design and control of arbitrary systems. A novel set theory based method for deriving terminal reliability expressions of complex system configurations is described in this paper. The reliability formula of a networked system is expressed as sum of disjoint products, where the product terms represent conjunctions of Boolean variables and are all mutually exclusive. We approach the problem of deriving minimized sum of disjoint products given a complex system topology from a logic synthesis perspective, and show how our proposed method fares well in comparison with the results generated using a widely preferred two-level logic minimizer for some benchmarks.