Fault tolerant distributed real time computer systems for I&C of prototype fast breeder reactor

Prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) is in the advanced stage of construction at Kalpakkam, India. Three-tier architecture is adopted for instrumentation & control (I&C) of PFBR wherein bottom tier consists of real time computer (RTC) systems, middle tier consists of process computers and top tier constitutes of display stations. These RTC systems are geographically distributed and networked together with process computers and display stations. Hot standby architecture comprising of dual redundant RTC systems with switch over logic system is deployed in order to achieve fault tolerance. Fault tolerant dual redundant network connectivity is provided in each RTC system and TCP/IP protocol is selected for network communication. In order to assess the performance of distributed RTC systems, scaled down model was developed with 9 representative systems and nearly 15% of I&C signals of PFBR were connected and monitored. Functional and performance testing were carried out for each RTC system and the fault tolerant characteristics were studied by creating various faults into the system and observed the performance. Various quality of service parameters like connection establishment delay, priority parameter, transit delay, throughput, residual error ratio, etc., are critically studied for the network.