A communication-based distributed model predictive control approach for large-scale systems

This work presents a distributed model predictive control strategy as an alternative to conventional centralized approaches, which often suffer from implementation issues when applied to large-scale systems. The overall system is partitioned into minimally coupled subsystems based on its structural properties. Then, the coordination among the subproblems is achieved by means of a communication protocol, which allows each local controller to broadcast its solution to the rest of controllers with a coupled variable. The proposed approach is tested on the quadruple-tank process, and its effectiveness is proved by comparing the obtained results to those documented in an existing benchmark.