Distributed automatic weather stations networks (AWSN)
play an important role in modern weather forecasting and digitalization
of agriculture. These networks allow to monitor various environment
parameters and transmit actual data in real time to data centers,
which makes possible to dramatically increase the efficiency of technical
processes controlling farming. Since these networks may cover large
areas, weather stations may use other stations to connect to gateways
via multihop routes. The nodes are deployed outdoors and they are subject
to failures due to harsh environment, deterioration of equipment,
battery discharge, etc. If a station is used as a relay for other nodes,
after its failure other stations may also become unavailable. To study
the network reliability in this paper we propose a general methodology,
consisting of six consolidated procedures, and apply the apparatus of
the multidimensional alternating stochastic processes. We demonstrate
the application of this analytical method for a special case of the minimal
topology AWSN. General topology cases are studied with the use of
the simulation approach. To study the numerical results, a discrete-event
simulation model in Python language was developed. The paper presents
numerical reliability analysis for three types of topologies: a simple network
with three stations, a forest of ternary trees and random multihop
networks with one or more gateways. In all scenarios we estimate reliability
for the cases of static and dynamic routing. Different ways to enhance
the distributed network reliability are discussed.