Emulation-based output regulation of linear networked control systems subject to scheduling and uncertain transmission intervals

We investigate output regulation for linear networked control systems using the emulation approach. We consider a regulator solving the problem for linear systems in the absence of the network, by following the Francis-Wonham framework. Next, the network is taken into consideration, in particular the induced time-varying inter-transmission intervals and scheduling constraints, and we model the overall system dynamics as a hybrid system. We show that only practical regulation can be achieved in general since the steady-state control input steering the output to zero cannot be generated in the networked context (in general). Explicit upper bounds on the output asymptotic gain and on the maximum allowable transmission interval guaranteeing boundedness of the closed-loop trajectories are provided, which are shown to be related.