Observability of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems

A finite state automaton is adopted as a model for Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (DEDS). Observations are assumed to be a subset of the event alphabet. Observability is defined as having perfect knowledge of the current state at points in time separated by bounded numbers of transitions. A polynomial test for observability is given. It is shown that an observer may be constructed and implemented in polynomial time and space. A bound on the cardinality of the observer state space is also presented. A notion of resiliency is defined for observers, and a test for resilient observability and a procedure for the construction of a resilient observer are presented.