Event-triggered stabilization of linear systems under channel blackouts

This paper addresses the problem of event-triggered control of linear time-invariant systems over time-varying rate limited communication channels. We explicitly account for the possibility of channel blackouts, i.e., intervals of time when the communication channel is unavailable for feedback. Assuming prior knowledge of the channel evolution, we study the data capacity, which is the maximum total number of bits that could be communicated over a given time interval, and provide an efficient real-time algorithm to lower bound it for a deterministic time-slotted model of channel evolution. Equipped with this algorithm we then propose an event-triggering scheme that guarantees Zeno-free, exponential stabilization at a desired convergence rate even in the presence of intermittent channel blackouts.