Network fabric fault-tolerance for Ethernet-based Networked Control Systems

Abstract

Networked Control Systems (NCS) are widely used in industrial applications. Ethernet has recently been used as the communication protocol in NCS. Since overcoming faults is crucial in control systems, fault-tolerance in NCS is being extensively investigated. This paper focuses on the fault-tolerance aspect of Ethernet-based NCS at the network fabric level. It proposes a novel architecture that achieves successful recovery from any single link or switch failure. The model was also tested and proved to be fault-tolerant for some multiple failures.