Simultaneous optimization of tracking performance and accommodation of sensor faults

Sensor performance can be monitored using SElf-VAlidating (SEVA) devices. These supply the user with an estimate of the measurement reliability as well as the measurement value. This paper presents a sensor fault-accommodation strategy exploiting information regarding the measurements quality, such that indices of dynamic performance and noise rejection are continuously optimized as the sensor reliabilities vary. An important result proved in this paper is that the minimization of these two indices is completely decoupled and hence noise rejection can be maximized without trading-off dynamic performance. Two further fault-accommodation strategies based on interpolation are then derived with the intent of trading-off optimality for computational simplicity and transparency. Numerical examples are provided showing that one of these ( stabilizing interpolation ) is particularly attractive, being only negligibly suboptimal for the examples considered and much better than a 'do-nothing' strategy.