Interval Type-2 fuzzy voter design for fault tolerant systems

  • Authors:

  • Ondrej Linda;Milos Manic

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science Dept., University of Idaho, USA;Computer Science Dept., University of Idaho, USA

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

A voting scheme constitutes an essential component of many fault tolerant systems. Two types of voters are commonly used in applications of real-valued systems: the inexact majority and the amalgamating voters. The inexact majority voter effectively isolates erroneous modules and is capable of reporting benign outputs when a significant disagreement is detected. However, an application specific voter threshold must be provided. On the other hand, amalgamating voter, such as the weighted average voter, reduces the influence of faulty modules by averaging the input values together. Unlike the majority voters, amalgamating voters are not capable of producing benign outputs. In the past, a Type-1 (T1) fuzzy voting scheme was introduced, allowing for both smooth amalgamation of voter inputs and effective signalization of benign outputs. The presented paper proposes an extension to the fuzzy voting scheme via incorporating Interval Type-2 (IT2) fuzzy logic. The IT2 fuzzy logic allows for an improved handling of uncertain assumptions about the distributions of noisy and erroneous inputs which are essential for correct design of the fuzzy voting scheme. The proposed voter design features robust performance when the uncertainty assumptions dynamically change over time. The IT2 fuzzy voter architecture was compared against the average voter, inexact majority voter, and the T1 fuzzy voter using a refined experimental harness. The reported results demonstrate improved availability, safety and reliability of the presented IT2 fuzzy voting scheme.