Decentralized event-triggering for control of LTI systems

This paper considers Linear Time Invariant (LTI) control systems with full state feedback, a central controller and distributed sensors not co-located with the central controller. We present a methodology for designing decentralized asynchronous event-triggers, which utilize only locally available information, for determining the time instants of transmission from the sensors to the central controller. The proposed design guarantees a positive lower bound for the inter-transmission times of each sensor, while ensuring global asymptotic stability of the origin of the system. Additionally, the proposed decentralized asynchronous event-triggers are shown to preserve scale invariance of inter-transmission times. The proposed method is illustrated through simulations of a linear example.

I. Introduction

State based aperiodic event-triggering is receiving increased attention (a representative list of the recent literature includes [1]–[7]) as an alternative to the traditional time-triggering (example: periodic triggering) in sampled data control systems. In event based control systems, a state or data dependent event-triggering condition implicitly determines time instances at which control is updated or when a sensor transmits data to a controller. Such updates or transmissions are in general aperiodic and depend on the system state. Such a paradigm is particularly appealing in control systems with limited computational and/or communication resources.