Predictive compensation for communication outages in networked control systems

A predictive outage compensator co-located with the actuator node in a networked control system can be used to counteract unpredictable losses of data in the feedback control loop. When a new control command is not received at the actuator node at an appropriate time instance, the predictive outage compensator suggests a replacement command based on the history of past control commands. It is shown that a simple tuning phase together with the monitoring of the control history can lead to a compensator that can improve the closed-loop control performance under communication outages considerably compared to traditional schemes. Worst case performance bounds are given that relate the quality of the tuning phase and the complexity of the compensator with the length of the communication outage period. Zero-order-hold (holding the past control command if the current is lost) and applying an a priori decided constant signal (using a predefined value on the control command if the current is lost) are special cases of the more general compensation scheme presented. The predictive outage compensator is illustrated through computer simulation with communication outages.