Algorithm for identifying highly suspect components in fault isolation

• US 5,282,212 A
• Filed: 12/28/1990
• Issued: 01/25/1994
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/1990
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Shah, Rasiklal P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Hoa T.
• Application Number:
  US07/635,037
• Time in Patent Office: 1,124 Days
• Field of Search: 371/15.1, 371/20.1, 371/20.6, 371/20.5, 395/916, 395/917
• US Class Current: 714/26
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/2836 Fault-finding or characterising G01R31/2822 - G01R31/2831 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2273 Test methods

Abstract

The present invention, in one embodiment, is a method for identifying highly suspect components in fault isolation. The method for identifying highly suspect components of a system wherein faulty operation has been indicated, respective components of the system generating respective error codes upon occurrence of faulty operation, includes the steps of identifying loops/strings of components, each loop/string being composed of at least one component which generated an error code, determining whether any of the loops/strings have common components, and identifying any of the common components as highly suspect components.

Claims

1. A method for identifying highly suspect components of a system wherein faulty operation has been indicated and wherein components in said system generate error codes upon the occurrence of a fault in said component, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) creating a diagram composed of blocks representing components of the system;

(b) representing connectivity of the components on the diagram;

(c) selecting a first start component;

(d) assigning a first label to the start component;

(e) identifying respective children components of the start component;

(f) assigning respective labels to the respective children components of the start component, the respective labels being unique for each component and representing the component connectivity;

(g) selecting another start component if any component connectivity represented in the diagram is not represented by a label subsequent to performance of step (f) and, after selecting a second start component, returning to step (e);

(h) storing the assigned component labels;

(i) upon generation of an error code, determining the component label of the component source of the error code, and designating the component source of the error code as a loop/string component;

(j) identifying upstream components of the loop/string component by sequentially deleting a right-most alphanumeric digit of the loop/string component label thereby generating a match label, and tagging component labels which are identical to said match label as upstream components;

(k) identifying downstream components of the loop/string component by comparing left-most alphanumeric digits of labels of components with alphanumeric digits of loop/string component labels wherein any component label whose left-most alphanumeric digits match the alphanumeric digits of the loop/string component label is tagged as a downstream component;

(l) determining whether any of the loops/strings have common components; and

(m) identifying any of the common components as highly suspect components.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the first start component is assigned the label "1" and a variable i is initially equal to "1", and each subsequent start component is sequentially assigned the label (i+1).

3. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the children components are sequentially assigned an alphanumeric digit starting with "1" and including the parent component label.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the diagram is created on a graphical editor.

5. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein the component labels are stored within a central computer memory.

6. A method in accordance with claim 1 wherein a component is represented in the diagram as an independent component only if the component is capable of generating an error code.

7. A method for operating a computer for identifying highly suspect components of a system wherein faulty operation has been indicated and wherein components in said system generate error codes upon the occurrence of a fault in said component, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) creating a diagram composed of blocks representing components of the system;

(b) representing connectivity of the components on the diagram;

(c) selecting a first start component;

(d) assigning a first label to the start component;

(e) identifying respective children components of the start component;

(f) assigning respective labels to the respective children components of the start component, the respective labels being unique for each component and representing the component connectivity;

(g) selecting another start component if any component connectivity represented in the diagram is not represented by a label subsequent to performance of step (f) and, after selecting a second start component, returning to step (e);

(h) storing the assigned component labels;

(i) upon generation of an error code, determining the component label of the component source of the error code, and designating the component source of the error code as a loop/string component;

(j) identifying upstream components of the loop/string component by sequentially deleting a right-most alphanumeric digit of the loop/string component label thereby generating a match label, and tagging component labels which are identical to said match label as upstream components;

(k) identifying downstream components of the loop/string component by comparing left-most alphanumeric digits of labels of components with alphanumeric digits of loop/string component labels wherein any component label whose left-most alphanumeric digits match the alphanumeric digits of the loop/string component label is tagged as a downstream component;

(l) determining whether any of the loops/strings have common components; and

(m) identifying any of the common components as highly suspect components.

8. A method in accordance with claim 7 wherein the first start component is assigned the label "1" and a variable i is initially equal to "1", and each subsequent start component is sequentially assigned the label (i+1).

9. A method in accordance with claim 7 wherein the children components are sequentially assigned an alphanumeric digit starting with "1" and including the parent component label.

10. A method in accordance with claim 7 wherein the diagram is created on a graphical editor and an electronic data file output from the graphical editor is provided as input to the computer.

11. A method in accordance with claim 7 wherein the component labels are stored within a central computer memory.