Robust FDI for FTC Coordination in a Distributed Network System

This paper focuses on the development of a suitable Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) strategy for application to a system of inter-connected and distributed systems, as a basis for a fault-tolerant Network Control System (NCS) problem. The work follows a recent study showing that a hierarchical decentralized control system architecture may be suitable for fault-tolerant control (FTC) of a network of distributed and interacting subsystems. The main idea is to use robust FDI methods to facilitate the discrimination between faults acting within one subsystem and faults acting in other areas of the network, so that a powerful form of active FTC of the NCS can be implemented, through an autonomous network coordinator. By using a robust form of the Unknown Input Observer (UIO), fault effects in each subsystem are de-coupled from the other subsystems, thus facilitating a powerful way to achieve local FDI in each subsystem under autonomous system coordination. Whilst the autonomous distributed control system provides active FTC under learning control, the FDI-based Reconfiguration Task enhances the network fault-tolerance, so that more significant subsystem faults can be accommodated in order to achieve a suitable standard of Quality of Performance (QoP) of the NCS.