A Simple Technique for Computing Network Reliability

A tree construction technique to compute a reliability expression of a network is derived. The technique is straight forward and good for both directed and undirected graphs. It gives mutually disjoint success branches. The reliability expression of each branch can be directly written by a set of rules. The reliability of the network can then be obtained by taking the direct sum of the reliabilities of the branches. It involves fewer multiplications than other known techniques. For a moderately complex network it is very easy to use this technique for evaluating reliability.