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Abstract

A completely autonomous failure recovery scheme for digital beam forming that provides self-diagnosis and self-healing of faulty processing chains in a communications satellite payload. A baseline processor comprises a plurality of processing chains that are identical in hardware and differ only in software. A redundant chain is programmed identically to the first processing chain by downloading the appropriate software coefficients from a controller. The first chain is then selected by a SELECT logic component its output is compared by a COMPARE logic component to the output of the redundant chain. In the absence of malfunctions, the two outputs should be identical. If the two outputs are not identical, the chain is diagnosed as faulty and it is replaced by a 'hot' standby redundant chain. Further, a control signal from the diagnosis module alters the position of at least one output switch to disconnect the faulty module. The redundant chain is then programmed identically to the second processing chain and the outputs are compared to determine whether the chain is faulty. The cycle repeats for each consecutive processing chain. This permits the identification of which chain, if any, is faulty. This scheme is completely autonomous providing both self-diagnosis and self-healing.

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First Claim