Reliability assessment of a discrete time cold standby repairable system

This paper is concerned with the study of a discrete time repairable system consisting of one active and one standby component. The lifetime and repair time are assumed to have discrete phase-type distributions. The system’s lifetime is represented as a compound random variable. A matrix-based expression for the probability generating function of the system’s lifetime is obtained based on the phase characteristics of lifetime and repair time distributions. The probability generating function is then used to obtain the distribution of the system’s lifetime. Reliability and hazard rate functions are computed and evaluated for some particular choices of lifetime and repair time distributions. The limiting behavior of the hazard rates is also investigated.