A perspective on fault diagnosis of industrial communication networks

If a uniform approach is used for fault diagnosis of industrial communication networks (ICNs), the task of writing applications is considerably simplified. Hence we evaluate the diagnostic requirements of ICNs with the goal of introducing a standard diagnostic strategy or tools. The model and techniques developed for system-level diagnosis are shown to have promise for the fault diagnosis of ICNs due to the close match between the assumptions of the system-level diagnosis and the operating characteristics of the ICNs. A general diagnosis architecture that incorporates system-level diagnosis is outlined. It is shown how the applications that construct the global diagnosis strategy can leverage of this underlying architecture, thus simplifying the complexity and the design of the fault diagnosis strategy