Fault Detection in Distributed Sensors Networks with Communication Delays

• Grant number: 12/11751-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2012
• End date: July 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Electrical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Takashi Yoneyama
• Grantee: Ronan Arraes Jardim Chagas
• Host Institution: Divisão de Engenharia Eletrônica (IEE). Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA). Ministério da Defesa (Brasil). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/17610-0 - Monitoring and control of dynamic systems subject to faults, AP.TEM

Abstract

If spatially distributed sensors measure physical quantities related to the same process, then the accuracy of the local estimate at each node can be improved if the nodes can share information through communication links. Furthermore, the system became more robust, since the estimation process is not interrupted if a set of nodes fails. However, some problems regarding the implementation of such networks must be considered to avoid the degradation of the estimation. One of them is the time delay in the communication channels between the nodes. It is well known that if the delayed measurements are incorrectly fused by a node, then its local estimate may present the divergence phenomenon. Furthermore, if the sensors or the dynamic process itself are faulted, then the failures must be identified so that the estimation process is not affected. Thus, it is proposed in the present project to study stochastic filtering algorithms for fault detection in distributed sensors networks with communication delays. To solve this problem, it is proposed to investigate the Rao-Blackwell filtering algorithm to adapt or to extend the already developed methodologies to fuse delayed information for the aforementioned fault detection problem in a distributed environment.