Sensor and actuator fault diagnosis of systems with discrete inputs and outputs

The paper describes a method for detecting and identifying faults that occur in the sensors or in the actuators of dynamical systems with discrete-valued inputs and outputs. The model used in the diagnosis is a stochastic automaton. The generalized observer scheme (GOS), which has been proposed for systems with continuous-variable inputs and outputs some years ago, are developed for discrete systems. This scheme solves the diagnostic problem as an observation problem, which is set up here for discrete-event systems. As the system under consideration is described by a stochastic automaton rather than a differential equation, the mathematical background and the diagnostic algorithms obtained are completely different from the well-known observers developed for continuous-variable systems. The GOS is extended here by a fault detection module to cope with plant faults that are different from actuator or sensor faults. The diagnostic algorithm consists of two steps, the first detecting the existence of a fault and the second isolating possible sensor or actuator faults or identifying plant faults. The results are applied to quantized systems whose discrete inputs and outputs result from a quantization of the continuous-variable input and output signals. Experimental results illustrate the proposed diagnostic method.