Non-Markovian Survivability Assessment Model for Infrastructure Wireless Networks

Abstract

Network design and operation of a mobile network infrastructure, especially its access points, need to consider survivability as a fundamental requirement. Quantifiable approaches to survivability analysis of such infrastructures are crucial. Most existing analytical models analyze the networks transient behaviors by applying homogeneous continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC). However, the distributions for transitions between states during a failure recovery are not exponential in many real cases. To address this problem, we first propose to use a non-Markovian model to characterize the transient behavior of the phased recovery of the network after a failure. Then, based on the proposed model, we conduct survivability analysis of the network. Moreover, numerical results are presented to validate the phase type (PH) approximation used in the proposed model. A case study illustrates the effects of different model parameters on the network's survivability. These results shed new insights not only on survivability analysis, e.g. the non-Markovian phased recovery model, but also on survivability provisioning, e.g. how the model parameters affect the network's survivability, of such a network against failure events.