Abstract
Two concepts of communication network reliability are considered. The first one, the ‘s-t’ reliability, is relevant for communication between a source station and a terminal station as in the case of a two way telephone communication. The second one, the overall reliability, is a measure of simultaneous connectedness among all stations in the network. An algorthm is presented which selects the optimal set of links that maximizes the overall reliability of the network subject to a cost restriction, given the allowable node-link incidences, the link costs and the link reliabilities. The algorithm employs a variaton of the simulated annealing approach coupled with a hierarchical strategy to achieve the gobal optimum. For complex networks, the present algorithm is advantageous over the traditional heuristic procedures. The solutions of two representative example network optimization problems are presented to illustrate the present algorithm. The potential utilization of parallel computing strategies in the present algorithm is also identified.
