RECONFIGURATION IN NETWORKED CONTROL SYSTEMS: Fault Tolerant Control and Plug-and-Play

The last decade has seen a rapid increase and convergence in the use of (a) digital network technology, (b) embedded systems and (c) fault analysis and on-line diagnosis. This has resulted in an increase in complexity of the resultant system which must not only ensure performance but also monitor and compensate for faults and hence avoid total failure. The advances made have also facilitated a plug-and-play (PnP) characteristic of networked embedded systems. This paper provides (i) a suitable architecture for the fault tolerant operation and (ii) enables the above PnP feature.