Sensor Fault Estimation Filter Design for Discrete-time Linear Time-varying Systems

This paper proposes a sensor fault diagnosis method for a class of discrete-time linear time-varying (LTV) systems. In this paper, the considered system is firstly formulated as a descriptor system representation by considering the sensor faults as auxiliary state variables. Based on the descriptor system model, a fault estimation filter which can simultaneously estimate the state and the sensor fault magnitudes is designed via a minimum-variance principle. Then, a fault diagnosis scheme is presented by using a bank of the proposed fault estimation filters. The novelty of this paper lies in developing a sensor fault diagnosis method for discrete LTV systems without any assumption on the dynamic of fault. Another advantage of the proposed method is its ability to detect, isolate and estimate sensor faults in the presence of process noise and measurement noise. Simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.