Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Engineering Science

Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Supervisor

Jiang, Jin

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), when deployed in harsh environments, can fail prematurely due to elevated rates of component failures. To counteract this problem, fault-tolerant techniques, such as redundancy, may be used. A redundant design requires a management system. Built-in tests (BITs) are one of the most commonly used approaches for managing redundancy, but it suffers from issues such as imperfect fault coverage and common-cause failures (CCFs). In this work, a BIT based redundancy management system has been designed that makes use of a supervisory unit and a modular architecture to address issues with imperfect fault coverage and CCFs. The design has been implemented in prototype WSN devices and evaluated through reliability analysis, fault injection testing and industrial test deployments. The evaluation results have demonstrated the fault-tolerant capabilities of the proposed system design.

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