Protocols for Networked Control Systems

Joao Hespanha, Alexandre Mesquita, and Girish Nair

In wireless networks the probability of successful communication can
be significantly increased by transmitting multiple copies of a same
packet. Communication protocols that exploit this by dynamically
assigning the number of transmitted copies of the same data can
significantly improve the control performance in a networked control
system with only a modest increase in the total number of
transmissions.

In this talk we present techniques to design communication protocols
that exploit multiple packets transmissions while seeking a balance
between stability/estimation performance and communication rate. An
average cost optimality criterion is employed to obtain optimal
protocols. Optimal protocols are also obtained for networks whose
nodes are subject to limited computation.