This work presents a series of alternatives for designing fault-tolerant systems in combinational and dynamic systems. Its goal is to describe several approaches to striking a cost-effective balance between redundancy and reliability.

The book is divided into an Introduction and two parts.Part 1 includes chapters 1 to 3. Part 2 includes chapters 4 to 9.Chapter 1 presents term definitions and a short history of the fault-tolerant field. It includes a short presentation of von Neumann’s hardware redundancy approach. Chapter 2 reviews von Neumann’s work on obtaining reliable combinational systems from unreliable components, and Hajek and Weller’s contributions in the same area. Chapter 3 investigates algorithm-based fault-tolerance (ABFT) systems, which assume a pre-specified number of faults and an error-free correction decoder. The underlying mathematical assumptions and equations are presented and discussed.

Part 2 begins with chapter 4, which is dedicated to implementations of algebraic machines. It focuses on providing fault-tolerance to group and semigroup machines, and includes examples of the technique’s applicability. Chapter 5 focuses on discrete-time linear-time invariant (LTI) dynamic systems and linear coding techniques. An explicit mapping of the scheme to a hardware implementation is provided. Chapter 6 is quite similar to chapter 5, but covers linear finite-state machines (LFSM). It discusses linear encoding techniques, and provides examples. Chapter 7 presents the problem of error-prone correcting mechanisms. A distributed voting scheme is analyzed, and coding techniques are presented that offer an efficient approach to this issue. Chapter 8 describes coding techniques in other contexts. Specifically, it presents a methodology for fault diagnosis in discrete event systems, which are actually Petri nets. Chapter 9 concludes the book, with an overview of future directions of research in the field of fault-tolerant schemes and systems.

The work fulfills its basic purpose of providing a new approach to fault-tolerant systems. It has a suitable length, and deals with the subject of fault-tolerance in a structured and scientific way. This structured and progressive way of explaining things is the book's best feature, appropriate for a subject like fault-tolerant systems, which is based on a rather complex mathematical apparatus. The author gives examples of the theory's application to some implementations of relevant interest, and discusses the impact thoroughly. I also especially liked the author's presentation of a short history of contributions, and of the evolution of the field, starting with von Neumann’s theory.

The intended audience for this book is researchers and practitioners in the area of fault tolerance and systems design and control. The index is adequate, and the references are very impressive. The document stands out as a reference in the field.