A discrete event systems approach to discriminating intermittent from permanent faults

Almost all work on model-based diagnosis (MBD) potentially presumes faults are persistent and does not take intermittent faults (IFs) into account. Therefore, it is common for diagnosis systems to misjudge IFs as permanent faults (PFs), which are the major cause of the problems of false alarms, cannot duplication and no fault found in aircraft avionics. To address this problem, a new fault model which includes PFs and IFs is presented based on discrete event systems (DESs). Thereafter, an approach is given to discriminate between PFs and IFs by diagnosing the current fault. In this paper, the regulations of (PFs and IFs) fault evolution through fault and reset events along the traces of system are studied, and then label propagation function is modified to account for PFs and the dynamic behavior of IFs and diagnosability of PFs and IFs are defined. Finally, illustrative examples are presented to demonstrate the proposed approach, and the analysis results show the fault types can be discriminated within bounded delay if the system is diagnosable.