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In this article a method for failure diagnosis of real time discrete event systems (RTDES) with 'fairness of traces' has been developed. Discrete event system (DES) modelling framework with provision for associating timing information with the transitions are required for handling real time systems. RTDES models and timed DES (TDES) models are examples of such modelling frameworks. Failure diagnosis in untimed DES models enables only the study of diagnosability of failures resulting in a change in the logical behaviour of the failed system. In addition to logical failures, failure diagnosis in RTDES and TDES models also enables diagnosability of failures that change the timing behaviour of the system but maintain the logical behaviour. Many systems exhibit fairness of traces with respect to transitions in the sense that any trace that visits a state infinitely often has infinitely many occurrences of all the transitions that emanate from that state. The abstraction employed in obtaining their (timed) DES models often obliterates this property. The RTDES and TDES diagnosability conditions, proposed in the literature and which do not consider fairness, are shown to be inadequate in this article. A new diagnosability condition is achieved by taking into account this fairness property in the RTDES models and shown to be necessary and sufficient for such systems. An analysis of time complexity for analysing the diagnosability of systems with fairness of traces is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper a method for fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) of real time systems has been developed. A modeling framework termed as real time discrete event system (RTDES) model is presented and a mechanism for FDD of the same has been developed. The use of RTDES framework for FDD is an extension of the works reported in the discrete event system (DES) literature, which are based on finite state machines (FSM). FDD of RTDES models are suited for real time systems because of their capability of representing timing faults leading to failures in terms of erroneous delays and deadlines, which FSM-based ones cannot address. The concept of measurement restriction of variables is introduced for RTDES and the consequent equivalence of states and indistinguishability of transitions have been characterized. Faults are modeled in terms of an unmeasurable condition variable in the state map. Diagnosability is defined and the procedure of constructing a diagnoser is provided. A checkable property of the diagnoser is shown to be a necessary and sufficient condition for diagnosability. The methodology is illustrated with an example of a hydraulic cylinder. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]