A New Material and Data Processing Design for a High Availability Target: The Geode System

Telecommunications power stations must satisfy harsh maintainability availability and operating constraints. The French PTT Administration and its associated industrialists propose : "A new material and data processing design for high availability target: The GEODE System". Operating safety is guaranteed by special architecture of the a.c. source composed of a generating set operating in sequential redundancy with the public mains network, a micro-data processing monitoring and control system linked by a specialized highway network to a central management unit common to the telecommunications systems of a whole region. The authors demonstrate their theoretical approach that has made it possible to attain the goal of operational safety by means of the Markov Chain and the Fault Free Analysis models and also their experimental approach in the organization of secondary circuits and sensors associated with the generating set. The last part of the paper is devoted to the description of the different functions of the software introduced into the monitoring and control units as also into the centralized management system (alarms, log book, periodic tests, curative or corrective maintenance, operational procedures, modifications to configurations). Apart from its design and its operation non-specific to telecommunications, the GEODE system introduces numerous innovations which can be extended to other equipment requiring high operating safety and operating facilities ensured by remote management and a powerful aid to troubleshooting.