Introduction to networking for integrated control systems

Integrated control system design, which requires interactions between the disciplines of communication systems and control systems, is introduced. An integrated control system has disparate and spatially distributed subsystems interconnected via a common communication channel. Digital data from sensor to controller and from controller to actuator are multiplexed along with traffic from other control loops and management functions. The asynchronous time-division multiplexing introduces time-varying and possibly stochastic delays in the control loops, degrading system dynamic performance. The analysis of delayed control systems is treated, covering the stochastic Lyapunov method approach, the D-partition method, and the method of steps.<>