Event-Triggering in Distributed Networked Control Systems

This paper examines event-triggered data transmission in distributed networked control systems with packet loss and transmission delays. We propose a distributed event-triggering scheme, where a subsystem broadcasts its state information to its neighbors only when the subsystem´s local state error exceeds a specified threshold. In this scheme, a subsystem is able to make broadcast decisions using its locally sampled data. It can also locally predict the maximal allowable number of successive data dropouts (MANSD) and the state-based deadlines for transmission delays. Moreover, the designer´s selection of the local event for a subsystem only requires information on that individual subsystem. Our analysis applies to both linear and nonlinear subsystems. Designing local events for a nonlinear subsystem requires us to find a controller that ensures that subsystem to be input-to-state stable. For linear subsystems, the design problem becomes a linear matrix inequality feasibility problem. With the assumption that the number of each subsystem´s successive data dropouts is less than its MANSD, we show that if the transmission delays are zero, the resulting system is finite-gain Lp stable. If the delays are bounded by given deadlines, the system is asymptotically stable. We also show that those state-based deadlines for transmission delays are always greater than a positive constant.