A Logarithmic Binary Decision Diagram-Based Method for Multistate System Analysis

Multistate systems (MSS) are systems in which both the systems, and/or their components may exhibit multiple performance levels or states. MSS can model complex behaviors such as shared loads, performance degradation, imperfect fault coverage, standby redundancy, and limited repair resources. The non-binary state property of MSS, and their components makes the analysis of MSS challenging. In this paper, we propose efficient logarithmically-encoded binary decision diagram (LBDD)-based methods for analysing MSS. The application and advantages of the proposed LBDD-based approaches, as compared to the existing binary decision diagram-based approaches, are demonstrated through the analyses of practical MSS examples, and a set of benchmark examples.