A Distributed Model Predictive Control Approach for the Control of Irrigation Canals

Abstract—Water networks are large-scale systems, consisting of many interacting components. They are currently typically operated by local decentralized controllers which receive set-points from human operators. We discuss how communi-cation among the local controllers can be included and in particular propose the use of distributed model predictive control for enabling the local controllers to determine set-points autonomously using communication and coordination. We consider the control of a particular class of water networks, viz. irrigation canals. A simulation study on a 7-reach irrigation canal illustrates the potential of the proposed approach. I