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

On general systems with network-enhanced complexities

In recent years, the study of networked control systems (NCSs) has gradually become an active research area due to the advantages of using networked media in many aspects such as the ease of maintenance and installation, the large flexibility and the low cost. It is well known that the devices in networks are mutually connected via communication cables that are of limited capacity. Therefore, some network-induced phenomena have inevitably emerged in the areas of signal processing and control engineering. These phenomena include, but are not limited to, network-induced communication delays, missing data, signal quantization, saturations, and channel fading. It is of great importance to understand how these phenomena influence the closed-loop stability and performance properties

A non-uniform predictor-observer for a networked control system

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12555-011-0621-5This paper presents a Non-Uniform Predictor-Observer (NUPO) based control approach in order to deal with two of the main problems related to Networked Control Systems (NCS) or Sensor Networks (SN): time-varying delays and packet loss. In addition, if these delays are longer than the sampling period, the packet disordering phenomenon can appear. Due to these issues, a (scarce) nonuniform, delayed measurement signal could be received by the controller. But including the NUPO proposal in the control system, the delay will be compensated by the prediction stage, and the nonavailable data will be reconstructed by the observer stage. So, a delay-free, uniformly sampled controller design can be adopted. To ensure stability, the predictor must satisfy a feasibility problem based on a time-varying delay-dependent condition expressed in terms of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI). 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Event-driven observer-based smart-sensors for output feedback control of linear systems

This paper deals with a recent design of event-driven observer-based smart sensors for output feedback control of linear systems. We re-design the triggering mechanism proposed in a previously reported system with the implementation of self-sampling data smart sensors; as a result, we improve its performance. Our approach is theoretically supported by using Lyapunov theory and numerically evidenced by controlling the inverted pendulum on the cart mechanism.Postprint (published version

Second-Order Consensus of Networked Mechanical Systems With Communication Delays

In this paper, we consider the second-order consensus problem for networked mechanical systems subjected to nonuniform communication delays, and the mechanical systems are assumed to interact on a general directed topology. We propose an adaptive controller plus a distributed velocity observer to realize the objective of second-order consensus. It is shown that both the positions and velocities of the mechanical agents synchronize, and furthermore, the velocities of the mechanical agents converge to the scaled weighted average value of their initial ones. We further demonstrate that the proposed second-order consensus scheme can be used to solve the leader-follower synchronization problem with a constant-velocity leader and under constant communication delays. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed adaptive controllers.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Contro

Event-triggered predictor-based control with gain-Scheduling and extended state observer for networked control systems

This paper investigates the stabilization of Networked Control Systems (NCS) with mismatched disturbances through a novel Event-Triggered Control (ETC), composed of a predictor-feedback scheme and a gain-scheduled Extended State Observer (ESO). The key idea of the proposed control strategy is threefold: (i) to reduce resource usage in the NCS (bandwidth, energy) while maintaining a satisfactory control performance; (ii) to counteract the main negative effects of NCS: time-varying delays, packet dropouts, packet disorder, and (iii) to reject the steady-state error in the controlled output due to mismatched disturbances. Moreover, we address the co-design of the controller/observer gains, together with the event-triggered parameters, by means of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) and Cone Complementarity Linearization (CCL) approaches. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control synthesis by simulation and experimental results in a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based test-bed platform