To Transmit or Not to Transmit: Optimal Sensor Scheduling for Remote State Estimation of Discrete-Event Systems

This paper considers the problem of optimal sensor scheduling for remote state estimation of discrete-event systems. In this setting, the sensors observe events from the plant and transmit them to the receiver or estimator selectively. The transmission mechanism decides to transmit the observed information or not according to an information transmission policy. The receiver needs to have sufficient information for the purpose of decision-making. To solve this problem, we first construct a non-deterministic dynamic observer that contains all feasible information transmission policies. Then we show that the information updating rule of the dynamic observer indeed yields the state estimate from the receiver’s point of view. Finally, we propose an approach to extract a specific information transmission policy, realized by a finite-state automaton, from the dynamic observer while satisfying some desired observation properties. A running example is provided to illustrate the proposed procedures.