Recommended prerequisite for participation in the module

Content, progress and pedagogy of the module

Every real life system will at some point or another experience faults. Students who complete this course will be able to, in a systematic manner, to analyze dynamic systems as well as distributed, network coupled systems. For each of the two system types the student will be able to:

• List the different considered faults, how they propagate through the system and assess their severity and occurrence likelihood.
• Develop methods for estimating if a given fault is present or not.
• Develop fault tolerant strategies for ensuring the continuation of the system in the presence of faults.

Learning objectives

Knowledge

• Of the taxonomy of fault tolerant systems
• Of simulation tools for testing and verification

Skills

• In analyzing a system for possible faults and modeling these
  • Failure Mode and Effect Analysis
  • Structural analysis
  • Faults in TCP/IP based Networks
• In evaluating the severity of different faults and prioritizing
  • By means of simulations
  • Stochastic models for components and their availability
• In designing detectors for selected faults
  • Structural analysis
    • Analytical Redundancy Relations
  • Passive fault detection
    • Unknown input observers
    • Parameter estimators
    • Parity space filters
  • Active fault detection
    • Design of perturbation signals
    • Neighbor discovery
    • Round-trip time
    • Heartbeats
    • Acknowledged transmissions
  • Decision ruling
    • Threshold based
    • Stochastic based
• In designing strategies for handling faults
  • Passive fault tolerance
    • Robust controllers
    • Reliable message broadcasting
    • Multipath routing
  • Active fault tolerance
    • Control strategy change
    • Redundant systems with backup components

Competences

• In designing fault tolerance strategies for a given system

Type of instruction

Types of instruction are listed in §17; Structure and contents of the programme.

Exam

Exams