A New Technique in Minimal Path and Cutset Evaluation

This paper presents a new technique for deducing the minimal paths and cutsets of a general network. A powerful concept of reducing the total number of minimal paths to its basic minimal paths is introduced. This concept reduces the computational time and required storage in deducing the minimal cutsets. A new technique for evaluating minimal cutsets has been adopted. Examples demonstrate the power of the technique in reducing the computational requirements as compared to the conventional method, and show that the task for analysing large systems now becomes trival.