Fault-Tolerant Switching Scheme with Multiple Sensor-Controller Pairs

This paper deals with the problem of achieving high performance and fault tolerance properties of a given plant by switching between a collection of different sensor-controller pairs. We assume that each sensor-controller pair has been previously designed to achieve an appropriate performance objective according to disturbances, sensor noises, available bandwidth and uncertainties. The proposed strategy selects, at each instant of time, the sensor-controller pair that minimises a suitable switching criterion. Stability of the switching system under normal (fault-free) operation conditions is established in the main result of this paper. In addition, a simulation example of active suspension control illustrates that the proposed switching system is able to maintain performance levels, and to preserve stability under the occurrence of severe faults in some of the sensors.