Architecture and design of a diagnostic information fusion system

This paper introduces an architecture for aggregation of output from different diagnostic tools. The diagnostic fusion tool deals with conflict resolution where diagnostic tools disagree, temporal information discord where the estimate of different tools is separated in time, differences in information updates where the classifiers are updated at different rates, fault coverage discrepancies, and integration of a priori performance specifications. To this end a hierarchical weight manipulation approach is introduced which creates and successively refines a fused output. The performance of the fusion tool is evaluated throughout its design. This allows impact assessment of adding heuristics and enables early tuning of parameters. Results obtained from diagnosing on-board faults from aircraft engines are shown which demonstrate the fusion tool’s operation.