Scheduled Communication in Sensor Networks

This brief addresses a networked control system problem: scheduling the transmission times in a time division multiple access (TDMA) architecture with a set of sensors embedded in a distributed control application. With TDMA, collisions are avoided, delays are bounded, and with the appropriate schedule, the data rate can be reduced to a minimum required stability. To further reduce the transmitted information, a controller-side observer is implemented. Two approaches are then proposed: 1) periodic transmission schedule, for which a periodic linear system analysis is done and 2) aperiodic schedule, where optimality criteria for schedule design are found. In both cases, little feedback is required from the controllers to the sensors, just an initial configuration.