Abstract: As an important means of improving the reliability of complex systems and ensuring that they can function better, distributed monitoring systems are usually designed and used in many areas. A centralized distributed monitoring system, which is usually used in monitoring system design, is presented. Based on reliability theory and the characteristics of this type of systems, monitoring reliability defined as the probability of successfully measuring and monitoring the object which is under control, an important performance measure for the distributed monitoring systems, is investigated. Furthermore, a case of application is used to illustrate the procedure. Analysis results show that the method proposed here is practical and valuable for designing monitoring systems and their maintenance.

Key words: Availability, Centralized distributed monitoring system, Markov chain, Monitoring reliability