Novel Node-Based BAT for Finding All Minimal Cuts

Abstract: The binary-state network, a basic network, and its components are either working or failed. It is fundamental to all types of current networks, such as utility networks (gas, water, electricity, and 4G/5G), the Internet of Things (IoT), social networks, and supply chains. Network reliability is an important index in the planning, design, evaluation, and control of network systems, and the minimal path (MC) is the basis of an MC-based algorithm for calculating reliability. A new BAT called recursive node-based BAT is proposed and implemented in a recursive manner such that the jth vector in the ith iteration is equal to its parent, which is the jth vector, except that its ith coordinate value is one. Based on time complexity analysis and experiments on 20 benchmark binary-state networks, the proposed recursive node-based BAT is more efficient than the best-known node-based algorithm in finding MCs when combined with powerful rules to discard these infeasible vectors and all their offspring.