Research On Reliability-Centered Maintenance Decision Of Communication Tower

Communication tower, the support body of communications antenna for wireless communications, is usually used outdoors under harsh conditions, and will inevitably lead to structural damage. If maintenance is not carried in time, the damage can cause paralysis of communication system, which will seriously affect people's production, construction, and living order, cause serious consequences to the society and people's lives and property. Improper maintenance plan can result in inadequate or excess maintenance, which will not only lead to high maintenance costs, but also not to guarantee the reliability of communication tower. So, it is necessary to conduct the research on maintenance decision of communication tower, and establish the optimal maintenance plan, which can improve the safety capacity in use and achieve economy of operation.Communication tower has many components, whose role is very different, need to be classified and use different maintenance methods. In this paper, communication tower of a base station as an example is studied. Reliability-centered maintenance is adopted, the finite element analysis has been done to determine functionally significant item (FSI) of communication tower; condition-based maintenance (CBM) and predetermined maintenance are used separately according to the characteristic of FSI, and the remaining components can use corrective maintenance.The study of CBM is conducted first. A reliability-centered maintenance threshold predicting method is proposed for continuously monitored component subject to degradation. Proportional hazards model is adopted for reliability modeling, the relationship between degradation features and maintenance threshold is established, and then maintenance threshold is predicted combined with the prediction of performance degradation features.Second, the research is conducted for multicomponent systems using predetermined maintenance. Considering the maintenance degree is imperfect, the relationship between components is economic relevance; by adjusting maintenance cycle interval of every single part under constrain of components reliability, optimal maintenance plan is established, and the purpose of minimum total maintenance costs is achieved.