Strategic Topological Formation for Wireless Control Systems

The excessive use of nodes and communication links in a wireless control system (WCS) causes unnecessary utilization of resources. In this article, a strategic topological formation is studied for a WCS, where a previously proposed topology consisting of a plant system, a controller system, and an intermediate network system is further developed. More specifically, this article presents a modeling framework and a design procedure for the topology that results in the utilization of a reduced number of nodes and communication links. It also discusses several conditions for the connectivity of the nodes under different topological scenarios. This article uses a four-tank process system as an application example to demonstrate the strategic topological formation of its WCS.