Title: Developing a fault prediction model for wired copper networks under precipitation

Authors: Mahboobeh Moghaddam; Hamid Shobeiri Nejad; Mahmoud Mesbah; Mark Hickman

Addresses: School of Economics, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia ' School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia ' School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia

Abstract: Telecommunication companies who face challenges of aging infrastructure need to balance the cost of maintenance with that of providing their services within a service level guarantee. For Telstra, the largest telecommunication company in Australia, this balance is achieved by adopting a passive approach to handle the faults that occur in the network. Rather than actively preventing faults, technicians are assigned to fix faults in a timely manner. However, to achieve an efficient and timely technician assignment, a prediction model is needed to advise planners of the potential number of faults in the network. From statistical analysis, we have developed a fault prediction model by investigating 29 months of data of faults. Our prediction model shows that rain has a significant impact on the number of faults in many areas across Australia, which can be the result of the aging infrastructure.

Keywords: aging infrastructure; network management; fault prediction model; statistical analysis; wired copper networks; rain effect.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCIS.2018.094412

International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 2018 Vol.14 No.3, pp.268 - 293

Received: 02 Dec 2017
Accepted: 01 May 2018

Published online: 31 Aug 2018 *

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