Inequality-based reliability estimates for complex systems

Full-system testing of large-scale systems is often infeasible or very costly. Thus, when estimating system reliability, it is desirable to employ a method that uses subsystem tests, which tend to be less expensive than full system tests. This paper presents a method for calculating reliability from subsystem tests that does not require that the subsystems be independent. It accounts for dependencies through the use of certain probability inequalities, which provide the basis for valid reliability calculations while not requiring full-system tests or information on greater-than-pairwise subsystem failure modes.

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