A New Method for Estimating the Maximum Allowable Delay in Networked Control of bounded nonlinear systems

In Networked Control Systems (NCSs) the information is exchanged through a real-time communication network among control system components. So the network induced time delay and data dropouts are unavoidable in NCSs. The time delay may degrade the performance of control systems and even destabilize the systems if the systems are designed without considering the effects of the time delays properly. Once the structure of a NCS is confirmed, it is essential to identify what the maximum time delay is allowed for maintaining the system stability which, in turn, is also associated with the process of controller design. This paper proposes a new method for estimating the maximum allowable time delay in networked control system with norm bounded nonlinearity. Some studies have been reported in estimation of the maximum time-delay allowed for retaining the system stability. However, most of the reported methods are normally over complicated for practical applications. A new stability method based on using the finite difference approximation for the delay term is proposed in this paper for estimating the maximum time-delay tolerance in networked control system with bounded nonlinearity, which has a simple structure and is easy to apply.