Monitoring functional integrity in critical control computers subjected to electromagnetic disturbances

Verifying the integrity of control computers operating in harsh electromagnetic environments is a key issue in the development, certification, and operation of control systems performing flight critical functions for future transport aircraft. This paper considers the problem of applying analytical redundancy, distributed detection techniques, and decision fusion to monitoring the integrity of a fault tolerant flight control computer with redundant processors for real-time laboratory and in-flight applications. This work is in the initial phase and focuses on the formulation of the design problem. The analytical redundancy for each control command is based on the nominal control law calculation using linear parameter varying modeling techniques. Malfunctions in the control law calculation of each processor are detected with statistical decision rules. Analysis of the performance of the distributed monitoring system is discussed