Reliability evaluation for a portable ethernet data acquisition device subjected to competing failure of random shocks

Abstract

The growth of users and data throughput of mobile network requires regulation on the data service provider. Thus, the portable device is designed to be accessed to the core network and mirror data for further analysis about the quality of service. Since the portable device is easy to be exposed to shocks while delivered to the work place; and it is cost-dependent for preventive or corrective repair action, in this paper, we conduct a reliability evaluation for the portable Ethernet data acquisition device which is subject to two types of random shocks (extreme shock vs. consecutive- k minor shock). We define a two-tuple Markov chain to record the occurrence of the two competing failure models and we derive the equation for evaluating the reliability of the device. Furthermore, in order to help the crew to determine whether or not to check the disks after a long time delivery, we, according to the age-based replacement policy, derive the equation for optimizing the disk inspection window by making trade-off between the costs of preventive repair and corrective repair. Finally, we explain the proposed reliability evaluation method with a numerical example.