Sensor Fault Detection and Classification Using Multi-Step-Ahead Prediction with an Long Short-Term Memoery (LSTM) Autoencoder

The Internet of Things (IoT) is witnessing a surge in sensor-equipped devices. The data generated by these IoT devices serve as a critical foundation for informed decision-making, real-time insights, and innovative solutions across various applications in everyday life. However, data reliability is often compromised due to the vulnerability of sensors to faults arising from harsh operational conditions that can adversely affect the subsequent operations that depend on the collected data. Hence, the identification of anomalies within sensor-derived data holds significant importance in the IoT context. This article proposes a sensor fault detection method using a Long Short-Term Memory autoencoder (LSTM-AE). The AE, trained on normal sensor data, predicts a 20-step window, generating three statistical features via SHapley Additive exPlanations from the estimated steps. These features aid in determining potential faults in the predicted steps using a machine learning classifier. A secondary classifier identifies the type of fault in the sensor signal. Experimentation on two sensor datasets showcases the method’s functionality, achieving fault detection accuracies of approximately 93% and 97%. It is possible to attain a perfect fault classification performance by slightly modifying the feature calculation approach. In a univariate prediction scenario, our proposed approach demonstrates good fault detection and classification performance.