Transmission power policies for energy-efficient wireless control of nonlinear system

TL;DR

This paper develops a transmission power policy for nonlinear wireless control systems that balances stability, control performance, and power efficiency by using threshold-based policies and channel-aware power control laws.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design procedure for transmission policies in nonlinear wireless control, optimizing power use while maintaining stability and performance.

Findings

Threshold policies effectively reduce communication power.

Power control laws impact energy efficiency and stability.

Guidelines for selecting policy parameters are provided.

Abstract

We present a controller and transmission policy design procedure for nonlinear wireless networked control systems. Our objective is to ensure the stability of the closed-loop system, in a stochastic sense, together with given control performance, while minimizing the average power used for communications. The controller is designed by emulation, i.e., ignoring the network, and the transmission power is given by threshold policies. These policies involve waiting a given amount of time since the last successful transmission instant, as well as requiring that the measured wireless channel gain is above a given threshold, before attempting a new transmission. Two power control laws are investigated: i) a constant power and ii) a power level inversely proportional to the channel gain. We explain how to select the waiting time, the channel threshold and the power level to minimize the induced average communication power, while ensuring the desired control objectives.