Title :
Dependability of distributed control system fault tolerant units
Author :
Pimentel, Juan R. ; Salazar, Mario
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Kettering Univ., Flint, MI, USA
Abstract :
We investigate two types of fault tolerant units (FTUs) suitable for dependable distributed control systems and numerically evaluate their reliability and mean time to failure (MTTF). A simple simulation-based methodology to numerically evaluate dependability functions of a wide variety of fault tolerant units is presented. The method is based on simulation of stochastic Petri nets. A set of 15 FTU configurations belonging to five groups is analyzed. Groups 1 and 2 belong to the node oriented category whereas groups 3 through 5 belong to the application oriented category. The methodology allows a quick and accurate evaluation of dependability functions of any distributed control system design in terms of the type of FTU (i.e., node or application), replicas per group, replicas per FTU, and shared replicas.
Keywords :
Petri nets; control system analysis; distributed control; failure analysis; fault tolerance; reliability; stochastic processes; MTTF; dependability functions; dependable distributed control systems; distributed control system fault tolerant units; fault tolerant units; mean time to failure; node oriented category; reliability; simulation-based methodology; stochastic Petri nets simulation; Access protocols; Communication system control; Computer networks; Control systems; Distributed control; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Real time systems; Time division multiple access; Vehicle safety;
Conference_Titel :
IECON 02 [Industrial Electronics Society, IEEE 2002 28th Annual Conference of the]
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7474-6
DOI :
10.1109/IECON.2002.1182903