Estimating the Reliability and Sensitivity of a Public Address System Through the Markov Decision Process

This research aims to evaluate the reliability indices of a public address system (PAS) through the Markovian approach. Many organizations and businesses use this system to address or broadcast a message or pass on important information to the huge gatherings assembled at big premises. This system is the nerve of these organizations and businesses. The major components of a PAS are a microphone, mixer, amplifier, and speaker. These components should work in harmony with one another to execute the intended task. Any failure in these components leads to big issues for the public, and they may miss very important information. Therefore, the reliability assessment of this system is of utmost importance. The authors used the Markovian decision process to model the PAS by analyzing the various failure rates and repairs of the components. The explicit expressions for reliability, availability, and MTTF have been obtained for clear understanding about the PAS behavior with time as well as different failures. The sensitivity analysis of reliability is performed as well to determine the critical components of the system. The obtained results show that the reliability of the PAS at 2000 operated hours is 0.8. Also, the finding reflects that the PAS reliability is much sensitive with the failure rate of microphone, mixer, and amplifier.