We introduce a class of discrete-time stochastic processes, called disjunctive processes, which are important for reliable simulations in random iteration algorithms. Their definition requires that all possible patterns of states appear with probability 1. Sufficient conditions for nonhomogeneous chains to be disjunctive are provided. Suitable examples show that strongly mixing Markov chains and pairwise independent sequences, often employed in applications, may not be disjunctive. As a particular step towards a general theory we shall examine the problem arising when disjunctiveness is inherited under passing to a subsequence. An application to the verification problem for switched control systems is also included.

We consider a random trial-based telegraph process, which describes a motion on the real line with two constant velocities along opposite directions. At each epoch of the underlying counting process the new velocity is determined by the outcome of a random trial. Two schemes are taken into account: Bernoulli trials and classical Pólya urn trials. We investigate the probability law of the process and the mean of the velocity of the moving particle. We finally discuss two cases of interest: (i) the case of Bernoulli trials and intertimes having exponential distributions with linear rates (in which, interestingly, the process exhibits a logistic stationary density with nonzero mean), and (ii) the case of Pólya trials and intertimes having first gamma and then exponential distributions with constant rates.