Invited Talk

Wireless control systems: system architectures and medium access

Karl H. Johansson, KTH, Sweden

Abstract
There is a growing deployment of wireless networks in industrial control systems. Lower installation costs and easier system reconfigurations for wireless devices can have a major influence on the future application of distributed control and monitoring. There is however a lack of theory for understanding if and how the allocation of communication resources should be integrated with the control application. In this talk, we will discuss how the access scheme for the wireless medium can influence the closed-loop performance of the networked control system. It will be argued that the underlying scheduling-control problem has a non-classical information structure. Appropriate models for medium access control protocols will be introduced. It will be shown how these protocols can be tuned for various wireless control applications. We will also see that by making asynchronous transmissions based on decisions taken locally at the sensor and actuator nodes, it is possible improve the design and to limit the use of the communication resources. The talk will be illustrated by several examples from ongoing projects with Swedish industry. The presentation is based on joint work with collaborators at KTH.