The complexity of reliability computations in planar and acyclic graphs
SIAM Journal on Computing
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This paper studies the problem of determining the exact distribution of shortest path length in directed stochastic networks. Our approach is based on the concept of structural factoring, in which a stochastic network is decomposed into an equivalent set of smaller, generally less complex subnetworks. Several network constructs are identified and exploited to reduce significantly the computational effort required to solve a problem relative to complete enumeration. This algorithm can be applied to two important classes of stochastic network problems: determining the critical path length distribution for acyclic networks and the two-terminal reliability for probabilistic networks. Computational experience with the algorithm has been encouraging and has allowed the exact solution of networks previously analyzed only by approximation techniques.