Communication and control co-design for networked control systems

This paper discusses the stabilization of a networked control system (NCS) in which sensors and actuators of a plant exchange information with a remote controller via a shared communication medium. Access to that medium is governed by a pair of periodic communication sequences. Under the model utilized here, the controller and plant handle communication disruptions by “ignoring” (in a sense to be made precise) sensors and actuators that are not actively communicating. This choice has the effect of significantly reducing the complexity of selecting control/communication policies. It is shown that, for discrete-time NCS, the reachability and observability of the plant can be preserved if the communication sequences are chosen properly. We propose a method for exponentially stabilizing a NCS by first identifying a pair of communication sequences that preserve reachability and observability and then designing an observer-based feedback controller based on those sequences.