Use of Reduced Order Observers in Reconstruction of Faulty Sensors

Modern systems are vulnerable to faulty behavior that can compromise system stability or performance. This work adds to fault tolerant control in the area of faulty sensors. This is done by taking advantage of redundancy in a linear system to create a set of reduced order observers. Each reduced order observer is designed to isolate faults from a single sensor. This method of fault isolation produces sensor fault tolerance. Certain classifications of sensor faults are completely removed from the system by this method. The work further continues to show how to measure the removed fault. The bank of reduced order observers produce fault information, in addition to reconstructing fault-free sensor estimates.