Network architecture and communication modules for guaranteeing acceptable control and communication performance for networked multi-agent systems

When sensory and actuation devices in a control system are exchanging data through one common communication medium, the sharing of communication bandwidth will induce unavoidable data latency and might degrade the control performance. Hence, the utilization of communication resource and the requirement of control specification should be analyzed and properly designed when implementing a control system over a network architecture. In this paper, we analyze the performance of information sharing of multiple cooperative agents over one communication network, and propose design methodologies of guaranteeing acceptable control and communication performance in a networked control system. In particular, we study the relationship between the sampling rates of a control system, and the transmission rates of a communication network, and then utilize an integrated networked control design chart to help select design parameters and visualize overall system performance at different sampling and transmission rates. Based on the design parameters selected, the communication modules by utilizing deadband control and state estimation are presented for guaranteeing both control and communication performance. Simulation studies are conducted in a network-and-control simulation tool that is developed on the Matlab/Simulink platform and is used to demonstrate the proposed design methodologies. Both the analysis and simulation results illustrate the characteristics of designing mechanisms between control and communication performance and show the improvement of implementing the proposed communication modules.