Application of protocol sequences in wireless networked control systems

In many wireless networked control applications, time-critical messages need to be transmitted among multiple users through a shared wireless channel. Due to user contention, Medium Access Control (MAC) is a key design issue. In this paper, we briefly review MAC schemes based on protocol sequences. Unlike probabilistic protocols, protocol sequences can guarantee that messages are delivered within a bounded delay and hence are suitable choices for time-critical networked control applications. The focus of this paper is to understand how such protocol sequence based communication schemes address time-critical problems such as controlling instability. Using a linear dynamical system as prototype, we present suboptimal control algorithms that take advantage of the unique characteristics of the protocol sequence schemes. Numerical results confirm their performance is superior to those based on traditional probabilistic MAC schemes.