Estimation in discrete reliability growth, a growth model with coefficient condition

Abstract

This paper considers the well known problem of estimating reliability in discrete reliability growth context with sequence of dichotomous success-failure outcomes. More precisely, the authors generalize the simple order relationship constraint with some coefficients. The authors prove that under some mild conditions, the generalized constraint MLE problem can be transformed to a traditional isotonic problem. The authors also study the lower confidence limit estimation of reliability with sample space ranking method. A simulation is conducted to illustrate the superiority of the proposed method.