FAHP-Based Reliability Evaluation of Distributed IoT Devices in a Distribution Power Grid

Reliable operation of distributed internet of things (IoT) devices is essential for supporting two-way interaction between energy flow and information flow in a distribution power grid. Traditional reliability evaluation methods suffer from several challenges including complex evaluation indicator selection and inadaptability of fixed weights with actual reliability requirements. In this paper, we first establish a multilevel reliability evaluation indicator system, where the indicators are selected through joint consideration of comprehensiveness and effectiveness. Then, we propose a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process- (FAHP-) based reliability evaluation method, where a three-layer reliability evaluation architecture is established. Specifically, a 0.1-0.9 scaling method is adopted to establish the fuzzy judgment matrix and scale the important relationship among state-layer elements, which can be dynamically adjusted to generate the weights adapting with actual operation state. The scores of distributed IoT devices and corresponding reliability levels can be obtained through the weighted summation of the scores of each layer. Simulation results verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method through comparing with actual reliability value and two existing evaluation methods.