Distributed sensor fault diagnosis in a class of interconnected nonlinear uncertain systems

In this paper, a distributed sensor fault detection and isolation (FDI) method is developed for a class of interconnected nonlinear uncertain systems. In the distributed FDI architecture, a FDI component is designed for each subsystem in the interconnected system. For each subsystem, its corresponding local FDI component is designed by utilizing local measurements and certain communicated information from neighboring FDI components associated with subsystems that are directly interconnected to the particular subsystem under consideration. Under certain assumptions, adaptive thresholds for distributed sensor fault detection and isolation in each subsystem are derived, ensuring robustness with respect to interactions among subsystems and system modeling uncertainty. Moreover, the fault detectability condition is rigorously investigated, characterizing the class of sensor faults in each subsystem that is detectable by the proposed distributed FDI method. Additionally, the stability and learning capability of the distributed adaptive fault isolation estimators is established. A simulation example of interconnected inverted pendulums mounted on carts is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the distributed FDI method.