Abstract
In this paper we study the effects on system reliability of the correlation over input space partitions between the rates of failure of two-channel fault-tolerant control software. We use a continuous-time semi-Markov model to describe the behavior of the system. We demonstrate via simulation that the variation of the failure rates of the channels over the partitions of the input space can affect system reliability very significantly. With a plausible range of model parameters we observed that the mean time to system failure may vary by more than an order of magnitude: positive correlation between the channel rates makes the system less reliable while negative correlation between the channel rates implies that the system is more reliable than assuming constant failure rates for the channels. Our observations seem to make a case for more detailed reliability measurements than is typically undertaken in practice.
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Popov, P., Manno, G. (2011). The Effect of Correlated Failure Rates on Reliability of Continuous Time 1-Out-of-2 Software. In: Flammini, F., Bologna, S., Vittorini, V. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6894. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24270-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24270-0_1
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