Decentralized networked control of systems with local networks: A time-delay approach

This paper develops the time-delay approach to large-scale networked control systems (NCSs) with multiple local communication networks connecting sensors, controllers and actuators. The local networks operate asynchronously and independently of each other in the presence of variable sampling intervals, transmission delays and scheduling protocols (from sensors to controllers). The communication delays are allowed to be greater than the sampling intervals. A novel Lyapunov-Krasovskii method is presented for the exponential stability analysis of the closed-loop large-scale system. In the case of networked control of a single plant our results lead to simplified conditions in terms of reduced-order linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) comparatively to the recent results in the framework of time-delay systems. Polytopic type uncertainties in the system model can be easily included in the analysis. Numerical examples from the literature illustrate the efficiency of the results.