Redundant data transmission in control/estimation over lossy networks

In lossy networks the probability of successful communication can be significantly increased by transmitting multiple copies of a same message through independent channels. In this paper we show that 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. We develop techniques to design communication protocols that exploit the transmission of multiple packets while seeking a balance between stability/estimation performance and communication rate. An average cost optimality criterion is employed to obtain a number of optimal protocols applicable to networks with different computational capabilities. We also discuss stability results under network contention when multiple nodes utilize these protocols.