Introduction to Discrete Event Systems

Recently, safe diagnosability of discrete event systems (DESs) was investigated by Paoli and Lafortune, which was viewed as the first necessary step of fault-tolerant supervision. In this paper, we consider the problem of safe diagnosability in the framework of stochastic discrete event systems (SDESs). We define the notion of safe diagnosability for stochastic automata, in which fault detection occurs before any given forbidden string in the failed mode of system is executed. The relationship between diagnosability and safe diagnosability for SDESs is analyzed. In particular, a necessary and sufficient condition for safe diagnosability of SDESs is presented by constructing the recognizer of illegal language and the safe diagnoser. Some examples are described to illustrate the results.

formula omitted]-diagnosability for active on-line diagnosis in discrete event systems

In this paper a new approach to fault diagnosis of discrete events systems modeled with Petri nets is presented. Fault events are associated to a subset of unobservable transitions of the net. Negative markings, called generalized marking, are used to estimate the explanations of the observed transitions. The generalized markings allow to cope with the problems related with the explosion of the state space estimation in a very efficient way in terms of memory usage. This feature makes the proposed approach suitable for the on-line fault diagnosis of discrete event systems.

The problem of safe failure diagnosis in discrete event systems is addressed. Starting from the standard definition of diagnosability of discrete event systems, which deals with the problem of detecting the occurrence of an unobservable event using the available observations on the system, the problem of performing the detection before the system executes a forbidden string is introduced. For example, this constraint could be required to prevent local faults from developing into failures that could cause safety hazards. This idea results in a new language property for discrete event systems called safe diagnosability. Necessary and sufficient conditions to test this language property are presented. Moreover, the problem of explicitly taking into account safe diagnosability as a requirement in system design is discussed.

A new method based on discrete event system is proposed for fault diagnosis of a certain kind of circuit, such as a relay control circuit. The original algorithm to obtain a minimal test set is improved. By using the improved algorithm the finest testable partition can be obtained and the complex testability analysis is avoided. The basic model of the proposed method and the general rule for fault diagnosis are described in detail. At first, the relay control circuit is described with corresponding combinational logic circuit model. Then, the fault diagnosis model of the circuit-under-test is constructed based on the given DES model. This method is applied to diagnose a relay control circuit. The results indicate that this method can diagnose this kind of circuit effectively and the new algorithm has a much lower computational complexity than the original algorithm. The fault elements can be localized exactly and this method has high practical value.

In the conventional framework for failure diagnosis of partially observed discrete event systems, it is assumed that, for each event, the corresponding output symbol is determined uniquely. However, this assumption does not hold in discrete event systems such as a mobile system, where an output symbol depends on not only an event but also a state at which the event occurs. In this paper, we model such discrete event systems by Mealy automata with nondeterministic output functions, and consider a decentralized failure diagnosis problem that requires any occurrence of a failure should be detected by at least one local diagnoser within a uniformly bounded number of steps. We present a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a decentralized diagnoser. We then present an algorithm for verifying this condition. Moreover, we present a method for synthesizing local online diagnosers.

This paper is about the fault diagnosis of discrete event systems (DES) under time constraints. The DES contains a series of tasks with well-defined time intervals for each, collected during repetitive runs of the system. The repetitive runs allowed us to calculate average function time for each task. The objective is to propose an algorithm that verifies the correct behavior of each individual task within the system. To illustrate the principal of the algorithm, we will apply it with two concrete examples. This algorithm is easy to implement and operate, and is very useful for all types of systems.

The aim of diagnosis is to detect and isolate faults according to the observable traces generated by the system. This article concerns multi-steps diagnosis of discrete event systems modelled with ordinary Petri nets. The main contribution is to decide which sets of places must be considered for r-steps diagnosis of some fault transitions or groups of fault transitions. Conditions and algorithms are proposed that lead to sensor selection in order to design diagnosers in a systematic way without expanding the reachability graph of the Petri net models.

Diagnosability of discrete event systems was previously defined in terms of finite state machines by Sampath et al. Two algorithms of polynomial complexity in the number of states were proposed later for checking their diagnosability. In this paper, we present an algorithm of polynomial complexity in the number of nodes for computing a sufficient condition of diagnosability of discrete event systems modeled by Petri nets. In other words, our algorithm is more efficient than previous ones since no state enumeration is necessary. This gives us an advantage to solve large real-world problems. Our algorithm is formulated as a linear programming problem, which is well-known to be of polynomial complexity in the worst case. Examples are given in the paper to illustrate our approach.

Diagnosability of Discrete Event Systems under Sensor Attacks*

In this paper a hybrid approach is proposed for supervisory control of discrete event systems (DES) subject to forbidden states. Assuming that an uncontrolled bounded Petri net (PN) model of a (plant) DES and a set of forbidden state specifications are given, the proposed approach computes a maximally permissive and nonblocking closed-loop hybrid model. The first step is to simplify the given PN model by means of PN reduction rules. The simplified model and the specifications are then represented as buffers, and supervisory control theory (SCT) is applied to obtain a Ramadge–Wonham (RW) supervisor in the form of an automaton. After reduction of the latter’s state size by a ‘control congruence’, the simplified RW supervisor is represented by a so-called auto-net and coupled to the given uncontrolled PN plant model by means of inhibitor arcs to represent the disabling actions. The plant model and supervisor auto-net run concurrently, synchronizing on shared events. This procedure provides a maximally permissive and nonblocking ‘hybrid’ (mixed PN/automaton) closed-loop controlled system. The method is straightforward logically, graphically, and technologically. Its applicability is shown by two examples, one of them a workcell from the PN control literature.

Diagnosability is an important property in the field of fault diagnosis. In this paper, a novel approach based on logical formula is proposed to verify diagnosability of Discrete event systems(DESs). CNFFSM is defined to represent a new model for DES. Each transition in DES can be described as a clause. According to CNF-FSM, we construct a CNF-diagnoser. Based on the resolution principle and CNF-diagnoser, an algorithm is presented to test whether the failure events can be detected or not in a finite number of observable events. Our algorithm can be applied in both off-line diagnosis and on-line diagnosis. Experimental results show that our algorithm can solve the diagnosability problem efficiently.

We are interested in constructing monitors for the detection of confidential information flow in the context of partially observable discrete event systems. We focus on the case where the secret information is given as a regular language. We first characterize the set of observations allowing an attacker to infer the secret information. Further, based on the diagnosis of discrete event systems, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which detection and prediction of secret information flow can be ensured, and construct a monitor allowing an administrator to detect it.

We consider a reliable decentralized diagnosis problem for discrete event systems in the inference-based framework. This problem requires us to synthesize local diagnosers such that the occurrence of any failure string is correctly detected within a finite number of steps, even if local diagnosis decisions of some local diagnosers are not available. In the case of single-level inference, we introduce a notion of reliable 1-inference-diagnosability and show that reliable 1-inference-diagnosability is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution to the reliable decentralized diagnosis problem. Then, we show how to verify reliable 1-inference-diagnosability effectively. When the system to be diagnosed is reliably 1-inference-diagnosable, we compute the delay bound within which the occurrence of any failure string can be detected. Local diagnosers can be constructed using the computed delay bound.

This paper presents a modular liveness-enforcing supervisory control design for scalable discrete event systems. A maximally permissive monitor-based supervisory control policy is suggested using divide and conquer paradigm. A vector-covering approach is used to minimize essential set of legal markings and first-met bad markings. Providing that modules of system interact by Enable operator, it will be proved that monitor-based supervisory control methods can be applied modularly. Then, Enable operator of Petri nets (PNs) can be used to synthesize subsystems. This algorithm is implemented by extending a graphical PN drawing and analysis tool with supervisory control analysis modules as Java codes. The experimental results show that this approach constitutes a primary step towards a hierarchical procedure that overcomes whole reachability graph computation, which is a bottleneck in deadlock preventing supervisory control policies.