A Satellite Incipient Fault Detection Method Based on Local Optimum Projection Vector and Kullback-Leibler Divergence

Timely and effective detection of potential incipient faults in satellites plays an important role in improving their availability and extending their service life. In this paper, the problem of detecting incipient faults using projection vector (PV) and Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence is studied in the context of detecting incipient faults in satellites. Under the assumption that the variables obey a multidimensional Gaussian distribution and using KL divergence to detect incipient faults, this paper models the optimum PV for detecting incipient faults as an optimization problem. It proves that the PVs obtained by principal component analysis (PCA) are not necessarily the optimum PV for detecting incipient faults. It then compares the on-line probability density function (PDF) with the reference PDF for detecting incipient faults on the local optimum PV. A numerical example and a real satellite fault case were used to assess the validity and superiority of the method proposed in this paper over conventional methods. Since the method takes into account the characteristics of the actual incipient faults, it is more adaptable to various possible incipient faults. Fault detection rates of three simulated faults and the real satellite fault are 98%, 84%, 93% and 92%, respectively.