A Discrete-Time Event-Triggering Approach for Scheduling Guidance Data Transmissions in Networked Control Systems

In this paper, we focus on reducing the wireless network utilization between an operator and a controlled dynamical system in a discrete-time setting, where the objective of the operator (e.g., ground station) is to provide guidance commands to the controlled dynamical system for command following purposes. To this end, we propose a discrete-time event-triggering approach in order to schedule guidance data transmissions between the operator and the controlled dynamical system. When an event occurs a new guidance command information is sent to the controlled dynamical system through three rules: The first rule is the common one in the literature and it is based on sending sampled points of of the guidance commands. In contrast to the existing results in the literature, the second rule is based on exchanging approximated curve-fitted functions, and the third rule is based on exchanging exact guidance command functions that are valid over a specified time-interval. We provide a rigorous stability analysis of the proposed approach and show that the second and the third rules achieve less guidance data transmissions (i.e., events) between the operator and the controlled dynamical system through an numerical example.