Reliability Analysis of Networked Control Systems with the Consideration of Operating Frequency

The operating frequency of the networked control system (NCS) determines both its control performance and heat flux density. Considering the significant effect of thermal stress on the reliability of electronics, a quantitative reliability analysis framework is proposed for NCSs with the consideration of its operating frequency. It includes 5 main steps: 1) Compute the power consumption of all its electronic components using circuit simulation; 2) obtain the thermal stress of these components by thermal simulation; 3) apply the thermal stress results to assess the reliability of components using the part stress analysis method; 4) calculate the reliability of the modules using reliability block diagrams; and 5) quantify the reliability of the NCS by combining the graph reduction method and other network reliability algorithms together. A double loop networked control system is used as an example to verify the effectiveness of our method.