Stochastic Processes

Abstract

Stochastic processes are used for the description of a systems operation over time. There are two main types of stochastic processes: continuous and discrete. The complex continuous process is a process describing a system transition from state to state. The simplest process that will be discussed here is a Markov process. Given the current state of the process, its future behavior does not depend on the past. This chapter describes the concepts of stochastic processes including Markov process, Poisson process, renewal process, quasi-renewal process, and nonhomogeneous Poisson process, and their applications in reliability and availability for degraded systems with repairable components.