Supervisory control of timed discrete-event systems subject to communication delays and non-FIFO observations

Conventional supervisory control synthesis techniques are not adequate anymore when a network between the plant and the supervisor introduces communication delays. This paper presents a method to synthesize a networked supervisor handling delays in both observation and control channels. To deal with the problem of delayed observations, we propose an automaton modeling the behaviour of the plant observed by a supervisor through a network, called observed plant. In this automaton, events observed by a supervisor are delayed from those occurring in the plant. Moreover, since observation channels are considered not to have the first in first out (FIFO) characteristic, events may not be necessarily observed in the same order as they occurred within the plant. A safe, observable, controllable and nonblocking supervisor is synthesized for the observed plant by means of an adapted synthesis algorithm for timed discrete-event systems (TDES). By enabling the achieved supervisor to predict the effects of control delays, it will be further transformed to a networked supervisor. The networked supervisor makes decisions ahead of time to ensure that the commands will be applied on the right (plant) state