An object-oriented troubleshooting expert system for electronic switching systems

Abstract

An object-oriented troubleshooting expert system that analyzes messages from a switching system when a fault occurs and informs maintenance operators of recommended actions is presented. The system is characterized by two basic features. The first consists of troubleshooting strategies which utilize knowledge of the structure and the behavior of switching system. These strategies automatically expand the scope of suspect portions of a switching system to be diagnosed, if test and diagnosis functions built into a switching system fail to pinpoint a fault location. The second feature is object-oriented knowledge representation, which makes it easy to implement and improve the above troubleshooting strategies. The constructed prototype expert system verifies the effectiveness of the proposed approach.<>