A general constructive approach to fault-tolerant design using redundancy

The use of redundancy to attain a fault-tolerant system design is described. Specifically, a general theory of redundancy is proposed that allows the design of fault-tolerant structures at the system-level, gate-level, or both. The theory accounts for classic approaches to redundant design such as TMR, NMR, and quadded and interwoven logics. It is shown that, by using mathematical block theory, it is possible to describe complex interconnections of redundant elements in a simple, straightforward fashion. Comparisons are made with other approaches to redundant design