Comparison of overapproximation methods for stability analysis of networked control systems

The presence of a communication network in a control loop induces many imperfections such as varying transmission delays, varying sampling/transmission intervals and packet loss, which can degrade the control performance significantly and can even lead to instability. Various techniques have been proposed in the literature for stability analysis and controller design for these so-called networked control systems (NCSs). The goal of this paper is to survey a particular class of techniques using discrete-time models that are based on polytopic overapproximations of the uncertain NCS model and lead to stability conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the existing techniques in both qualitative and quantitative manners. In particular, we apply all methods to a benchmark example providing a numerical comparison of the methods with respect to conservatism as well as numerical complexity.