Minimizing down-link traffic in networked control systems via optimal control techniques

This paper presents a control strategy for multi-variable plants where controller and actuators are connected via a digital data-rate limited channel. In order to minimize bandwidth utilization, a communication constraint is imposed, which restricts all data transmitted to belong to a finite set and only permits one plant input to be addressed at a time. We develop a new scheme, which aims at optimizing quadratic performance under the above communication constraint. A key aspect of this contribution is the implementation of the control scheme to a real laboratory-scale system.