Performance evaluation of fault tolerant systems represented by Markov models
A method to evaluate the performance of fault tolerant systems whose configuration can be represented by time-invariant, discrete-time, discrete-state Markov models is introduced. Each state is assumed to be associated with a constant qualitative measure of the system's performance. The method first computes the moments of the performance probability mass function (PMF) and then finds an approximating function that has the same moments. The form of this function is a maximum entropy solution of the moment matching problem. A simple algorithm for calculating the necessary moments is derived and a method for finding the approximate performance PMF is suggested. After some modification, the method is applied to an example, the Inertial Upper Stage navigation system.