Particle filtering for sensor fault diagnosis and identification in nonlinear plants

We propose a novel method for sensor monitoring and fault-tolerant estimation in systems described by general stochastic nonlinear and/or non-Gaussian state-space models. Faults are defined as abruptly occurring calibration errors, causing the sensor readings to be biased or scaled. Actuators and the process itself are assumed to be fault free. The main novelty of the work is an adaptive particle filter, whose configuration changes in order to diagnose sensor faults and to compensate for their effects. The presence, type and magnitude of sensor faults are determined through hypothesis testing and maximum likelihood estimation, based on the difference between the measurements and the particle filter estimates. The validity of the proposed approach was demonstrated through simulations on a drum-boiler model, although its effectiveness is not conditioned on any particular feature of the considered example.