Determination of Software Reliability based on Multivariate Exponential, Lomax and Weibull Models
Saralees Nadarajah, Samuel Kotz · Monte Carlo Methods and Applications · 2006
When a new software is produced it is usually tested for failure several times in succession (whenever a failure is detected the software is rectified and tested again for failure). Suppose X 1 , X 2 , …, X k denote the times between failures. Usually these variables will be dependent because of inter-dependence between the different components of the software. For the customer the main characteristic of interest is the value t for which the probability Pr{min( X 1 , X 2 , …, X k ) ≥ t } would be high. In this paper we consider a number of dependence models for X 1 , X 2 , …, X k based on multivariate exponential, multivariate Lomax and multivariate Weibull distributions. For each model we show how t could be determined for a specified degree of reliability. We also assess the sensitivity of t with respect to k failures and with respect to the dependence and the marginal parameters of each model.