Variable delays and message losses: Influence on the reliability of a control loop

Rony Ghostine (1) , Jean-Marc Thiriet (2) , Jean-François Aubry (1)

1 CRAN - Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy
2 GIPSA-SAIGA - GIPSA - Signal et Automatique pour la surveillance, le diagnostic et la biomécanique

Today, new technologies (distributed systems, networks communication) are more and more integrated for applications needing to fit real-time and critical constraints. It means that we require more and more to integrate these new technology-based components in systems or sub-systems dedicated to safety or dealing with a high level of criticality. Control systems are generally evaluated as a function of required performances (overshoot, rising time, response time) under the condition to respect a stability condition. Reliability evaluation of such systems is not trivial, because generally classical methods do not take into account time and dynamic properties which are the bases of control systems. The methodology proposed in this paper deals with an approach for the dependability evaluation of control systems, based on Monte-Carlo simulation, giving a contribution to the integration of automatic control and dependability constraints.

Mots clés: Control dependability Reliability Control systems Communication delays Message losses Transient failures Monte-Carlo simulation

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Rony Ghostine, Jean-Marc Thiriet, Jean-François Aubry. Variable delays and message losses: Influence on the reliability of a control loop. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2011, 96 (1), pp.160-171. ⟨10.1016/j.ress.2010.08.003⟩. ⟨hal-00534346⟩