Smart sensor system for diagnostic monitoring

The present invention is a component sensor monitoring system which includes all sensor and plant component monitoring at distributed plant locations close to the sensors which are the source of the signals to be analyzed. Minimally preconditioned analog sensor signals are multiplexed, filtered and adjusted before being applied to an analog-to-digital converter to produce digital samples to be stored in a data memory of a digital signal processor using a direct memory access technique. A data acquisition computer also control the selection of sensors, gain, etc., based on commands from a controller. The digital signal processor, collects data, processes it and sends it to the controller for analysis to determined plant component condition and to check the possibility that the particular sensor may be malfunctioning. Once a sensor signal is processed, the controller selects the next sensor by transmitting an appropriate command to the data acquisition computer.