Fault-tolerant control of networked control systems with packet dropouts: Switched system approach

This paper focuses on the fault-tolerant control (FTC) of networked control systems (NCSs) with packet dropouts using switched system approach. The basic idea is to model such NCSs as a discrete-time switched system. Thus, the FTC of such NCSs can be reduced to that of switched systems. Sufficient conditions are presented about the stabilization of NCSs. Stabilizing switched state/output feedback controllers can be constructed by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which can be easily tested with efficient LMI algorithms. The maximum allowable dropout bound can be obtained by solving an optimization problem.

1 Introduction

Networked control systems (NCSs) are feedback control systems whose feedback paths are closed through a feedback network. The defining feature of an NCS is that information (reference input, plant output, control input, etc.) is exchanged using a network among control system components (sensors, controller, actuators, etc.). Compared with traditional control systems, NCSs can reduce system wiring, expedite system diagnosis and maintenance, and improve system efficiency, flexibility, and reliability. These advantages have made the NCS popular in many applications, such as traffic control, satellite clusters, mobile robotics, etc. Meanwhile, as pointed out in [5], the introduction of communication network in the feedback loop makes the analysis and design of an NCS complex. The network-induced delay problem, packet-dropout problem, multiple-packet transmission problem are three main problems emerging in NCSs and have received much attention in the past decades (see [1]–[24] and the references therein).