Communications solutions for the Prognostics & Health Management architecture

New DoD requirements to implement Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) capabilities are creating new demands on communication systems for collecting PHM data from fielded systems. This is a ldquoproactive equipment maintenance capability enabled by using Health Management indications to predict a functional failure ahead of the event and take appropriate actionrdquo. PHM involves the collection and processing of precursors to failure data from fielded platforms for the purpose of mitigating failures before mission loss. Although communication systems and networks have mainly been used for mission execution, there is a growing need to communicate predictive system health data in order to mitigate field failures before they affect mission success. These new PHM data requirements include Remaining Useful Life and configuration data to be collected from all fielded products using various communication devices and networks. The following PHM communication challenges and proposed solutions are discussed in this paper: (a) Collecting PHM data from field systems using Ad-hoc networks; (b) Mitigating bandwidth usage via data transformation techniques; (c) Prioritizing and provisioning high QoS for mission-critical data; (d) Managing health information using distributed databases.