Optimal Scheduling Methods for Time-Triggered Networked Control

Networked Control System (NCS) are becoming increasingly popular due to their flexibility. In a NCS sensors, actuators and controllers communicate through a shared medium which inevitably limits the amount of bandwidth supported by the NCS. In this paper, we consider the optimal o-line (static) communication scheduling problem. Given a (distributed) plant and a controller we design a (sub)optimal communication policy between `nodes' that minimizes the performance degradation introduced by the network. The complex optimization process is performed by fast stochastic algorithms that can easily handle scheduling constraints. Theoretical results are validated through numerical analysis and practical implementation in a hardware-in-the-loop adaptive cruise control system.