Integrated predictive control and scheduling co-design for networked control systems

A predictive control and scheduling co-design approach is proposed to deal with the controller and scheduler design for a set of networked control systems which are connected to a shared communication network. In the proposed approach, a predictive controller is applied to generate the control predictions for each system using delayed sensing data and previous control information, and a time delay compensator is designed at the actuator side to actively compensate for the network-induced delay in the forward channel when the control action is taken. Two different scheduling algorithms, the existing static rate monotonic (RM) scheduling algorithm and a new dynamic scheduling algorithm called dynamic feedback scheduling (DFS), are considered to schedule the transmissions of the control signals generated by the predictive controller, which are packed and transmitted to the actuator in one packet simultaneously. Both the scheduling algorithms are designed with the guarantee of the stability of all the systems, which is achieved by ensuring that the time delay of the systems do not exceed the upper bound under which the systems are stable. It is also pointed out that the RM algorithm is a special case of the proposed DFS algorithm, in the sense that the former can work only in a private network environment, whereas the latter extends its application to such networks where other components occupying the network. Simulations for both the RM and the DFS algorithms, illustrate the validity of the proposed approach.