Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Meyer, J. F..
An attempt was made to refine the current notion of system reliability by identifying and investigating attributes of a system which are important to reliability considerations. Techniques which facilitate analysis of system reliability are included. Special attention was given to fault tolerance, diagnosability, and reconfigurability characteristics of systems.
The structural and functional complexity of man-made systems is reported, showing the reliability analysis task becoming much more complex. Quantative methods are discussed for analyzing system quality. The reliability equations that are developed for systems employing modular redundancy and sparing are discussed to illustrate the need for computation-based reliability analysis.
Research is reported in the program to refine the current notion of system reliability by identifying and investigating attributes of a system which are important to reliability considerations, and to develop techniques which facilitate analysis of system reliability. Reliability analysis, and on-line fault diagnosis are discussed.
A formal model for the study of on-line diagnosis is introduced and used to investigate the diagnosis of unrestricted faults. A fault of a system S is considered to be a transformation of S into another system S' at some time tau. The resulting faulty system is taken to be the system which looks like S up to time tau, and like S' thereafter. Notions of fault tolerance error are defined in terms of the resulting system being able to mimic some desired behavior as specified by a system similar to S. A notion of on-line diagnosis is formulated which involves an external detector and a maximum time delay within which every error caused by a fault in a prescribed set must be detected. It is shown that if a system is on-line diagnosable for the unrestricted set of faults then the detector is at least as complex, in terms of state set size, as the specification. The use of inverse systems for the diagnosis of unrestricted faults is considered. A partial characterization of those inverses which can be used for unrestricted fault diagnosis is obtained.
The analysis and design of reliable systems are discussed. The attributes of system reliability studied are fault tolerance, diagnosability, and reconfigurability. Objectives of the study include: to determine properties of system structure that are conducive to a particular attribute; to determine methods for obtaining reliable realizations of a given system; and to determine how properties of system behavior relate to the complexity of fault tolerant realizations. A list of 34 references is included.
The concept of a 'system with faults' is introduced as a suggested point of departure for the theoretical study of fault tolerance and diagnosis in systems. The model is defined relative to a general representation scheme for systems and, depending on the choice of representation, can be used to investigate either hardware or software faults that occur during either the design or use of a system.
Representation of a memory fault of a sequential machine M by a function mu on the states of M and the result of the fault by an appropriately determined machine M(mu). Given some sequential behavior B, its inherent tolerance to memory faults can then be measured in terms of the minimum memory redundancy required to realize B with a state-assigned machine having fault tolerance type tau and fault tolerance level t. A behavior having maximum inherent tolerance is exhibited, and it is shown that behaviors of the same size can have different inherent tolerance.
A formal model for the study of reliable combinational networks is introduced and used to determine network properties conducive to the location of faults. The usual concept of fault location is generalized to be an interval on the partially ordered set of subsets of network nodes that classifies nodes into three disjoint sets: a faulty set, a fault-free set, and an indeterminate set. After developing basic properties of locatable faults, necessary and sufficient conditions for a fault to be locatable in an arbitrary network are stated and proven.
Memory cell fault tolerant sequential machine synthesis, considering masking feasibility and lower bounds on minimum redundancy
Concepts of fault masking in switching networks for spaceborne data systems
Permanent memory faults effects on sequential machines finite-state behavior, considering masking role in synthesis of fault-tolerant sequential networks
Literature survey of redundant systems for spacecraft data systems reliability analysis
Set theory and probability theory for defining total and partial system reliability
Time division multiplexer with magnetic latching relays
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