Scheduling Networked Guidance Data Transmissions Based on a New Event-Triggering Approach

This article focuses on reducing wireless network utilization between an operator (e.g., a ground station) and a controlled dynamical system (e.g., a vehicle equipped with a feedback control algorithm), where the goal of the operator is to provide guidance commands (e.g., trajectory information) to the controlled dynamical system for command following. To this end, we propose a new event-triggering approach for scheduling networked guidance data transmissions between the operator and the controlled dynamical system. The proposed approach utilizes a reference model available to the operator and we explore three event-triggering rules based on an error signal, which is a function of the state of this reference model and the guidance commands. Specifically, the first rule is a standard one in the literature and it is predicated on exchanging sampled guidance commands with the controlled dynamical system. Unlike existing results in the literature, the second and the third rules are, respectively, predicated on exchanging approximated curve-fitted guidance command functions, which are estimated using the current guidance command value and future waypoints, and exact guidance command functions, which are valid over a time-interval. We further generalize our results to address the presence of system uncertainties using adaptive control theory. In addition to providing detailed stability analysis, a numerical example is also given to show that the second and the third rules achieve less guidance data transmissions (i.e., events) between the operator and the controlled dynamical system.