2.4 Binary Decision Diagram
In 1959, BDDs were first introduced by Lee to represent switching circuits [36]. In 1986, Bryant investigated the full potential for efficient BDD‐based algorithms [37]. Since then, BDD and their extended forms have been applied to diverse application domains [38–48]. In 1993, BDDs were first adapted to the FT reliability analysis of binary‐state systems [ 4 , 10 ,11]. It has been shown by numerous studies that in most cases, the BDD‐based methods require less computational time and memory than other FT reliability analysis methods (e.g. cutsets, pathsets‐based inclusion-exclusion (I‐E) or sum of disjoint products (SDP) methods, and Markov‐based methods). Recently, BDDs and their extended forms have become the state‐of‐the‐art combinatorial models for efficient reliability analysis of diverse types of complex systems. Refer to [49] for a comprehensive discussion of BDD and their extended...