Lyapunov-based model predictive control of nonlinear systems subject to time-varying measurement delays

In this work, we focus on model predictive control of nonlinear systems subject to time-varying measurement delays. The motivation for studying this control problem is provided by networked control problems and the presence of time-varying delays in measurement sampling in chemical processes. We propose a Lyapunov-based model predictive controller which is designed taking time-varying measurement delays explicitly into account, both in the optimization problem formulation and in the controller implementation. The proposed predictive controller guarantees that the closed-loop system is ultimately bounded in a region that contains the origin if the maximum delay is smaller than a given constant. The theoretical results are illustrated through a chemical process example.