We investigate control of a non-linear process when communication and
processing capabilities are limited. The sensor communicates with a controller
node through an erasure channel which introduces i.i.d. packet dropouts.
Processor availability for control is random and, at times, insufficient to
calculate plant inputs. To make efficient use of communication and processing
resources, the sensor only transmits when the plant state lies outside a
bounded target set. Control calculations are triggered by the received data. If
a plant state measurement is successfully received and while the processor is
available for control, the algorithm recursively calculates a sequence of
tentative plant inputs, which are stored in a buffer for potential future use.
This safeguards for time-steps when the processor is unavailable for control.
We derive sufficient conditions on system parameters for stochastic stability
of the closed loop and illustrate performance gains through numerical studies.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, under revie