The Diagnosis of Failures Via the Combination of Distributed Observations

This paper discusses a computational problem related to the distributed diagnosis of system behavior in the discrete-event systems framework. A new framework for distributed diagnosis is introduced where local observers periodically transmit their observations to a centralized coordinator that diagnoses failures in the system. A condition called combined observation diagnosability is shown for the centralized coordinator to be able to diagnose system failures. A construction is shown to test a system for combined observation diagnosability