Preface

Feedback control of dynamical systems has benefited from recent development of sensing and actuation nodes with strong local computation capabilities and from the use of digital communication networks for system interconnections. With all these advancements, the detailed analysis of feedback control systems remains an important part of the complex networked control applications. System uncertainties have always been a central issue in control systems. It is critical to address uncertainty effects on the stability and performance of control systems when it is not possible to obtain continuous feedback measurements. Such is the case in Networked Control Systems (NCS) where the communication channel is of limited bandwidth and it is also shared by different subsystems. This book presents a specific framework, the Model-Based Networked Control Systems (MB-NCS) framework, for design and analysis of NCS. This approach places special emphasis on model uncertainties. Detailed development of the basic results is provided and a number of important extensions are addressed; multiple examples are given as well. Using the model-based approach we introduce several types of architectures and control strategies that aim at improving performance in NCS. The overall performance of NCS considers the appropriate use of network resources, network bandwidth in particular, in addition to the desired response of the system being controlled. The plant model is used at the controller/actuator side to approximate the plant behavior so that the sensor is able to send data at lower rates, since the model can provide information to generate appropriate control inputs while the system is running in open-loop mode. It is assumed that readers are familiar with the basics concerning Linear Systems. This book is intended for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners with interest in the study of control over networks, distributed systems, and control with communication constraints. These readers typically have the background or have completed a graduate-level course on Linear Systems. In this book we take the MB-NCS framework, from its initial configuration and apply it to many complex applications. Different basic problems in control theory are studied in the context of NCS using the model-based approach. The general idea is that, in the absence of continuous feedback, the available knowledge about the