On event-triggered and self-triggered control over sensor/actuator networks

Event-triggered and self-triggered control have been recently proposed as an alternative to the more traditional periodic execution of control tasks. The possibility of reducing the number of executions while guaranteeing desired levels of performance makes event-triggered and self-triggered control very appealing in the context of sensor/actuator networks. In this setting, reducing the number of times that a feedback control law is executed implies a reduction in transmissions and thus a reduction in energy expenditures. In this paper we introduce two novel distributed implementations of event-triggered and self-triggered policies over sensor/actuator networks and discuss their performance in terms of energy expenditure.