Reliability of Standby Systems

Salvatore Distefano

Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Messina,

C.da Di Dio, 98166 Messina, Italy
sdistefano@unime.it
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano,
Via Ponzio 34/5, 20133 Milano, Italy
distefano@elet.polimi.it

Abstract. Reliability theory bases on the concept of boolean compo-

nents, i.e. of up, operating or down, failed components. But often such
assumption is not adequate for modeling specific behaviors of compo-
nents, units, subsystems and systems. It cannot catch, for example, dif-
ferent operating conditions of components due to dependencies on other
components or environment variations.
Aim of this paper is to investigating a specific dynamic behavior, the
standby phenomena in reliability contexts, starting from a characteriza-
tion from both internal and external perspectives. The formal specifica-
tion of the problem is obtained through the dynamic reliability theory,
providing its analytical formulation.

Keywords: Standby, redundancy, standby redundant systems, k-out-

of-n standby redundancy.

1 Introduction and Motivations

Standby is a hot topic in reliability as also highlighted in literature. With specific
regards to the evaluation of the standby systems reliability several techniques
have been used. For example, in [1] and [2] renewal theory and semi-Markov
models are exploited to evaluate some specific case studies such as: three-state
systems, systems with mixed constant repair time, systems with multi-phase
repair, systems with non-regenerative states, two-component systems with cold
standby and maintenance, and so on. The method of the supplementary variables
and Laplace transform are instead used in [3,4] to evaluate the stationary avail-
ability of n-unit parallel redundant systems with correlated failures and single
repair facilities.
However, to the best of our knowledge, the specific literature partially faces
or lacks of some aspects that can arise by evaluating the problem from different
perspectives. In particular, as introduced above, the concept of standby is always
mixed to the redundant one. This fact can drive to misunderstanding or even to
approximations that can result wrong and dangerous in the system design.
The main aim of this paper is to cover these lacks, focusing on standby and
deeply investigating the related phenomena in reliability contexts from both the

D.-S. Huang et al. (Eds.): ICIC 2011, LNBI 6840, pp. 267–275, 2012.

c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
268 S. Distefano

internal and the external viewpoints. In the former case, the unit is observed in
isolation, without taking into account the interactions with the external envi-
ronment, in order to characterize and to evaluate its internal behaviour. Then,
the unit behaviour is evaluated also considering such interactions, in a larger
system context. With the support of dynamic reliability theory, the character-
ization thus specified is formalized in terms of specific equations starting from
the conservation of reliability principle.
In order to achieve such goals, the remainder of the paper is organized as
follows: section 2 provides background on the standby behaviour and related
concepts; section 3 characterizes the standby from both the internal and the ex-
ternal points of view also introducing standby redundant systems, while section
4 specifies the standby behaviour in analytical terms. Then section 5 summarizes
and closes the paper.

2 Preliminary Concepts

Standby systems are characterized by dual-operating mode: active and sleep.

While in active-mode a standby system is fully operating, able to provide its
services. Otherwise, in the sleep-mode no services are provided by the standby
system until a specific external call, signal or input switches it from the sleep to
the active mode.
Standby systems are widely used in modern technologies due to their capa-
bilities to optimize costs, to reduce the environmental impact, to optimize the
system reliability and availability, to adequately manage redundant resources,
and so on.
Usually the concept of standby, in technological context, is referred to the
energy or to the power consumption of the system. In fact, more and more often
standby devices such as standby generators, standby batteries, standby power
systems, etc., are used in designs, projects, schemes, data sheets and technical
notes. As a confirmation of this, several technical glossaries now include standby
and related terms, such as sleep-mode or standby-mode as in [10]: a mode in which
electronic appliances are turned off but under power and ready to activate on
command.
The attention attracted by standby and related issues has consolidated a
research trend on the topic, especially in recent times in which the sensitiveness
on environment, pollution and energy-related problems is strongly grown, giving
rise to many government [7,8,9,11] and non-government [5,6,12] initiatives and
projects.
This has impacted on the designing approach, preferring low-power devices
managed through standby policies with the aim of reducing the power consump-
tion and optimize costs, performance and reliability. In the ICT context, Green
computing [16] was born in order to achieve such goals.
A good definition of standby in proposed in [11], in particular since it high-
lights the relationship between standby and energy/power, thus characterizing
the active/sleep modes in terms of the load applied to the standby unit: in the