On a small-gain approach to distributed event-triggered control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a small-gain based method for stabilizing large-scale systems using distributed event-triggered control, ensuring stability and avoiding Zeno behavior through novel sampling schemes.

Contribution

It proposes new event-triggered sampling schemes for distributed control systems that guarantee stability via a generalized small-gain theorem and prevent Zeno phenomena.

Findings

Stability of large-scale systems is achieved using the proposed event-triggered schemes.

Two variations of controllers effectively prevent Zeno behavior.

The approach extends small-gain methods to distributed event-triggered control.

Abstract

In this paper the problem of stabilizing large-scale systems by distributed controllers, where the controllers exchange information via a shared limited communication medium is addressed. Event-triggered sampling schemes are proposed, where each system decides when to transmit new information across the network based on the crossing of some error thresholds. Stability of the interconnected large-scale system is inferred by applying a generalized small-gain theorem. Two variations of the event-triggered controllers which prevent the occurrence of the Zeno phenomenon are also discussed.