Innovative Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery - Project Description

A space mission has to be primarily economical, save and reliable. To ensure these aspects, the system has to react in a timely manner on occurring faults or unforeseen problems. In many cases the operators on the ground can only react delayed in time due to great distances and resulting signal delays and therefore, the satellite has to enter into a predefined, safe configuration and looses valuable operational time. This forces the developer to place more autonomy on-board. This paper uses a cognitive network to describe the satellite for the innovative Fault Detection and Isolation and Recovery program (iFDIR). It digitizes the physical relations of a satellite's systems to find faults in sensors and actuators. The fault detection and isolation should be improved by combining already working algorithms with the physical and logical regularity. Furthermore, the algorithm shall be able to adapt itself to new circumstances by adapting the network and the system parameters.