This Article 
   
 Share 
   
 Bibliographic References 
   
 Add to: 
 
Digg
Furl
Spurl
Blink
Simpy
Google
Del.icio.us
Y!MyWeb
 
 Search 
   
Evaluating FTRE's for Dependability Measures in Fault Tolerant Systems
February 1995 (vol. 44 no. 2)
pp. 275-285
ASCII Text
x 
 
Suresh Rai, "Evaluating FTRE's for Dependability Measures in Fault Tolerant Systems," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 275-285, February, 1995.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/12.364538,
author = {Suresh Rai},
title = {Evaluating FTRE's for Dependability Measures in Fault Tolerant Systems},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Computers},
volume = {44},
number = {2},
issn = {0018-9340},
year = {1995},
pages = {275-285},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/12.364538},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Computers
TI - Evaluating FTRE's for Dependability Measures in Fault Tolerant Systems
IS - 2
SN - 0018-9340
SP275
EP285
EPD - 275-285
A1 - Suresh Rai,
PY - 1995
VL - 44
JA - IEEE Transactions on Computers
ER -
 

Abstract—In order to analyze dependability measures in a fault tolerant system, we generally consider a nonstate space or a state space type model. A fault tree with repeated events (FTRE's) presents an important strategy for the nonstate space model. This paper deals with a conservative assessment to complex fault tree models, henceforth called as CRAFT, to obtain an approximate analysis of the FTRE's. It is a noncutset, direct, bottom-up approach. It uses failure probability or failure rate as input and determines a bound on the probability of occurrence of the \mbi{TOP} event. CRAFT generalizes the concept of a cutting heuristic that obtains the signal probabilities for testability measurement in logic circuits. The method is efficient and solves coherent and noncoherent FTRE's having AND, OR, XOR, and NOT gates. In addition, CRAFT considers M/N, priority AND, and two types of functional dependency, namely OR and AND types. Examples such as the Cm^* architecture and a fault-tolerant software based on recovery block concept are used to illustrate the approach. The paper also provides a comparison with approaches such as SHARPE, HARP, and FTC.

Index Terms—Coherent and noncoherent structures, conservative assessment, cutting heuristic, dependability measure, fault tree analysis, fault tolerant system, functional dependency, priority AND, signal probability.

[1] P. Chatterjee,“Modularization of fault trees: A method to reduce the cost of analysis,”inReliability and Fault Tree Analysis. Philadelphia, PA: SIAM, 1975, pp. 101–126.
[2] J. B. Fussel, E. F. Aber, and R. G. Rahl,“On the quantitative analysis of priority-AND failure logic,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. R-25, pp. 324–326, Dec. 1976.
[3] T. Inagaki and E. J. Henley,“Probabilistic evaluation of prime implicants and top-events for non-coherent systems,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. R-29, pp. 361–367, Dec. 1980.
[4] K.S. Trivedi, Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing, and Computer Science Applications. Prentice Hall, 1982.
[5] J. Savir, G. S. Ditlow, and P. H. Bardell,“Random pattern testability,”IEEE Trans. Comput., vol. C-33, no. 1, pp. 79–90, Jan. 1984.
[6] W. S. Leeet al.,“Fault tree analysis, methods, and applications—A review,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. R-34, pp. 194–203, Aug. 1985.
[7] E. C. Archambeau,“Network segmentation for pseudo-exhaustive testing,”CRC Technical Report No. 85-10, Depts. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University, CA, July 1985.
[8] K. Stecher,“Evaluation of large fault-trees with repeated events using an efficient bottom-up algorithm,IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. R-35, no. 1, pp. 51–58, Apr. 1986.
[9] L. B. Page and J. E. Perry,“A simple approach to fault-tree probabilities,”Comput. and Chemical Eng., vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 249–257, 1986.
[10] J. B. Duganet al.,“The hybrid automated reliability predictor,”AIAA J. Guidance, Control and Dynamics, vol. 9, pp. 319–331, May/June 1986.
[11] M. O. Ball and J. S. Provan,“Disjoint products and efficient computation of reliability,”Oper. Res., vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 703–715, Sept./Oct. 1988.
[12] T. Kohda, E. Henley, and K. Inoue,“Finding modules in fault trees,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. 38, pp. 165–176, 1989.
[13] R. W. Butler and A. L. Martensen,“The fault tree compiler-program and mathematics,”NASA Technical Paper 2915, July 1989.
[14] S. Rai and D. P. Agrawal,“Advances in distributed system reliability,”Tutorial Text, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1990.
[15] S. Soh and S. Rai,“CAREL: Computer Aided RELiability evaluator for distributed computing networks,”IEEE Trans. Parallel Distributed Syst., vol. 2, pp. 199–213, Apr. 1991.
[16] M. Abramovici, M. A. Breuer, and A. D. Friedman,Digital System Testing and Testable Design. New York: Computer Science Press, 1990.
[17] O. Coudert and J. C. Madre,“MetaPrime: An interactive fault tree analyzer,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 121–127, Mar. 1994.
[18] J. B. Dugan and S. J. Bavuso,“Fault trees and sequence dependencies,”inProc. Annu. Reliability and Maintainability Symp., 1990, pp. 286–293.
[19] J. Arlat, K. Kanoun, and J.-C. Laprie,“Dependability modeling and evaluation of software fault-tolerant systems,”IEEE Trans. Comput., vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 504–513, Apr. 1990.
[20] C.(Raj) Sundarajan,Guide to Reliability Engineering. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.
[21] W. Schneeweiss,“Approximate fault tree analysis without cutsets,”inProc. Annu. Reliability and Maintainability Symp., 1992, pp. 370–375.
[22] R. Kapur and M. R. Mercer,“Bounding signal probabilities for testability measurement using conditional syndromes,”IEEE Trans. Comput., vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 1580–1588, Dec. 1992.
[23] D. Siewiorek and R. Swarz, Reliable Computer Systems: Design and Evaluation. Digital Press, 1992.
[24] J. B. Dugan and F. A. P.-Hine,“Simple models of fault tolerant software,”inProc. Annu. Reliability and Maintainability Symp., 1993, pp. 354–359.
[25] M. Malhotra and K. S. Trivedi,“Power hierarchy of dependability model types,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, 1994.
[26] M. Veeraraghvan and K. S. Trivedi,“An improved algorithm for symbolic reliability analysis,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. 40, pp. 347–358, Aug. 1991.
[27] R. A. Sahner and K. S. Trivedi,“Reliability modeling using SHARPE,”IEEE Trans. Reliability, vol. R-36, pp. 186-193, June 1987.
[28] ——,“Performance and reliability analysis using directed acyclic graphs,”IEEE Trans. Software Eng., pp. 1105-1114, Oct. 1987.

Citation:
Suresh Rai, "Evaluating FTRE's for Dependability Measures in Fault Tolerant Systems," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 275-285, Feb. 1995, doi:10.1109/12.364538
Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use.