Time-and event-driven communication process for networked control systems: A survey

Copyright © 2014 Lei Zou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.In recent years, theoretical and practical research topics on networked control systems (NCSs) have gained an increasing interest from many researchers in a variety of disciplines owing to the extensive applications of NCSs in practice. In particular, an urgent need has arisen to understand the effects of communication processes on system performances. Sampling and protocol are two fundamental aspects of a communication process which have attracted a great deal of research attention. Most research focus has been on the analysis and control of dynamical behaviors under certain sampling procedures and communication protocols. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the analysis and synthesis issues of NCSs with different sampling procedures (time-and event-driven sampling) and protocols (static and dynamic protocols). First, these sampling procedures and protocols are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds as well as dynamic natures. Then, the developments of the stabilization, control, and filtering problems are systematically reviewed and discussed in great detail. Finally, we conclude the paper by outlining future research challenges for analysis and synthesis problems of NCSs with different communication processes.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61329301, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Stability and synchronization of discrete-time Markovian jumping neural networks with mixed mode-dependent time delays

Copyright [2009] IEEE. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of Brunel University's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.In this paper, we introduce a new class of discrete-time neural networks (DNNs) with Markovian jumping parameters as well as mode-dependent mixed time delays (both discrete and distributed time delays). Specifically, the parameters of the DNNs are subject to the switching from one to another at different times according to a Markov chain, and the mixed time delays consist of both discrete and distributed delays that are dependent on the Markovian jumping mode. We first deal with the stability analysis problem of the addressed neural networks. A special inequality is developed to account for the mixed time delays in the discrete-time setting, and a novel Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is put forward to reflect the mode-dependent time delays. Sufficient conditions are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) that guarantee the stochastic stability. We then turn to the synchronization problem among an array of identical coupled Markovian jumping neural networks with mixed mode-dependent time delays. By utilizing the Lyapunov stability theory and the Kronecker product, it is shown that the addressed synchronization problem is solvable if several LMIs are feasible. Hence, different from the commonly used matrix norm theories (such as the M-matrix method), a unified LMI approach is developed to solve the stability analysis and synchronization problems of the class of neural networks under investigation, where the LMIs can be easily solved by using the available Matlab LMI toolbox. Two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the main results obtained

On delayed genetic regulatory networks with polytopic uncertainties: Robust stability analysis

Copyright [2008] IEEE. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of Brunel University's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.In this paper, we investigate the robust asymptotic stability problem of genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays and polytopic parameter uncertainties. Both cases of differentiable and nondifferentiable time-delays are considered, and the convex polytopic description is utilized to characterize the genetic network model uncertainties. By using a Lyapunov functional approach and linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques, the stability criteria for the uncertain delayed genetic networks are established in the form of LMIs, which can be readily verified by using standard numerical software. An important feature of the results reported here is that all the stability conditions are dependent on the upper and lower bounds of the delays, which is made possible by using up-to-date techniques for achieving delay dependence. Another feature of the results lies in that a novel Lyapunov functional dependent on the uncertain parameters is utilized, which renders the results to be potentially less conservative than those obtained via a fixed Lyapunov functional for the entire uncertainty domain. A genetic network example is employed to illustrate the applicability and usefulness of the developed theoretical results

Storage Capacity Diverges with Synaptic Efficiency in an Associative Memory Model with Synaptic Delay and Pruning

It is known that storage capacity per synapse increases by synaptic pruning in the case of a correlation-type associative memory model. However, the storage capacity of the entire network then decreases. To overcome this difficulty, we propose decreasing the connecting rate while keeping the total number of synapses constant by introducing delayed synapses. In this paper, a discrete synchronous-type model with both delayed synapses and their prunings is discussed as a concrete example of the proposal. First, we explain the Yanai-Kim theory by employing the statistical neurodynamics. This theory involves macrodynamical equations for the dynamics of a network with serial delay elements. Next, considering the translational symmetry of the explained equations, we re-derive macroscopic steady state equations of the model by using the discrete Fourier transformation. The storage capacities are analyzed quantitatively. Furthermore, two types of synaptic prunings are treated analytically: random pruning and systematic pruning. As a result, it becomes clear that in both prunings, the storage capacity increases as the length of delay increases and the connecting rate of the synapses decreases when the total number of synapses is constant. Moreover, an interesting fact becomes clear: the storage capacity asymptotically approaches $2/\pi$ due to random pruning. In contrast, the storage capacity diverges in proportion to the logarithm of the length of delay by systematic pruning and the proportion constant is $4/\pi$. These results theoretically support the significance of pruning following an overgrowth of synapses in the brain and strongly suggest that the brain prefers to store dynamic attractors such as sequences and limit cycles rather than equilibrium states.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figure

Synchronization of coupled neutral-type neural networks with jumping-mode-dependent discrete and unbounded distributed delays

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2013 IEEE.In this paper, the synchronization problem is studied for an array of N identical delayed neutral-type neural networks with Markovian jumping parameters. The coupled networks involve both the mode-dependent discrete-time delays and the mode-dependent unbounded distributed time delays. All the network parameters including the coupling matrix are also dependent on the Markovian jumping mode. By introducing novel Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals and using some analytical techniques, sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee that the coupled networks are asymptotically synchronized in mean square. The derived sufficient conditions are closely related with the discrete-time delays, the distributed time delays, the mode transition probability, and the coupling structure of the networks. The obtained criteria are given in terms of matrix inequalities that can be efficiently solved by employing the semidefinite program method. Numerical simulations are presented to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.This work was supported in part by the Royal Society of the U.K., the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61074129, 61174136 and 61134009, and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China under Grants BK2010313 and BK2011598

Counting to Ten with Two Fingers: Compressed Counting with Spiking Neurons

We consider the task of measuring time with probabilistic threshold gates implemented by bio-inspired spiking neurons. In the model of spiking neural networks, network evolves in discrete rounds, where in each round, neurons fire in pulses in response to a sufficiently high membrane potential. This potential is induced by spikes from neighboring neurons that fired in the previous round, which can have either an excitatory or inhibitory effect. Discovering the underlying mechanisms by which the brain perceives the duration of time is one of the largest open enigma in computational neuro-science. To gain a better algorithmic understanding onto these processes, we introduce the neural timer problem. In this problem, one is given a time parameter t, an input neuron x, and an output neuron y. It is then required to design a minimum sized neural network (measured by the number of auxiliary neurons) in which every spike from x in a given round i, makes the output y fire for the subsequent t consecutive rounds. We first consider a deterministic implementation of a neural timer and show that Theta(log t) (deterministic) threshold gates are both sufficient and necessary. This raised the question of whether randomness can be leveraged to reduce the number of neurons. We answer this question in the affirmative by considering neural timers with spiking neurons where the neuron y is required to fire for t consecutive rounds with probability at least 1-delta, and should stop firing after at most 2t rounds with probability 1-delta for some input parameter delta in (0,1). Our key result is a construction of a neural timer with O(log log 1/delta) spiking neurons. Interestingly, this construction uses only one spiking neuron, while the remaining neurons can be deterministic threshold gates. We complement this construction with a matching lower bound of Omega(min{log log 1/delta, log t}) neurons. This provides the first separation between deterministic and randomized constructions in the setting of spiking neural networks. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of compressed counting networks for synchronizing neural networks. In the spirit of distributed synchronizers [Awerbuch-Peleg, FOCS\u2790], we provide a general transformation (or simulation) that can take any synchronized network solution and simulate it in an asynchronous setting (where edges have arbitrary response latencies) while incurring a small overhead w.r.t the number of neurons and computation time