Guaranteed cost control of networked systems with stochastic medium-access protocols: methodology and applications

• Published in: IET control theory & applications Vol. 13; no. 2; pp. 258 - 268
• Main Authors: Wen, Shixi, Guo, Ge, Chen, Bo, Gao, Xiue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Institution of Engineering and Technology 29.01.2019
• Subjects: adaptive control; asymptotic stability; binary exponential; completely known transition probabilities; contention‐based protocols; control framework; control system synthesis; designed feedback controller; feedback; guaranteed cost control method; intelligent vehicle highway systems; Lyapunov methods; Markov chain‐driven medium‐access control; mean‐square exponential stability; medium‐access procedure; networked systems; partially known transition probabilities; plants which share communication channels; Research Article; robust control; SSS theory; stability; stochastic medium‐access protocols; stochastic switching system; stochastic systems; sufficient conditions; switching control problem; time‐varying systems; time-varying systems; Markov chain-driven medium-access control; asymptotic stability; mean-square exponential stability; networked systems; feedback; sufficient conditions; SSS theory; switching control problem; partially known transition probabilities; stochastic systems; robust control; stability; guaranteed cost control method; binary exponential; completely known transition probabilities; stochastic switching system; adaptive control; control system synthesis; designed feedback controller; intelligent vehicle highway systems; contention-based protocols; plants which share communication channels; medium-access procedure; control framework; stochastic medium-access protocols; Lyapunov methods
• ISSN: 1751-8644; 1751-8652; 1751-8652
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-cta.2018.5441

This study investigates a switching control problem for a set of plants which share communication channels, and for which medium-access control is achieved based on contention-based protocols such as the binary exponential back-off algorithm. The medium-access procedure can be modelled by a Markov chain with completely or partially known transition probabilities. The entire networked system operates as a stochastic switching system (SSS). Based on the average dwell time technique, guaranteed cost control method, and SSS theory, sufficient conditions are derived to establish the relation between the mean-square exponential stability and the property of the Markov chain-driven medium-access control for the SSS. Depending on these conditions, the designed feedback controller can stabilise the SSS using the mean-square exponential and guarantee the desired robust performance. The proposed control framework is extended and applied to the cooperative adaptive cruise control of vehicles within the context of intelligent vehicle highway systems, which can reject the disturbance resulting from the fluctuating acceleration of preceding vehicles. Numerical simulations and experiments using laboratory-scale cars show the effectiveness of the proposed control method.