Fault-Tolerant Control Research for Networked Control System under Communication Constraints

Implementing a control system over a communication network induces inevitable time delays that may degrade performance and even cause instability. One of the most effective ways to reduce the negative effect of delays on the performance of networked control system (NCS) is to reduce network traffic. In this paper, adjustable deadbands are explored as a solution to reduce network traffic in NCS. A method of fault-tolerant control of networked control system is presented, which takes into account system response as well as network traffic. The integrity design for a kind of NCS with sensor failures and actuator failures is analyzed based on robust fault-tolerant control theory and information scheduling. After detailed theoretical analysis, the paper also provides the simulation results, which further validate the proposed scheme.

Networked Control Systems:A Survey of Trends and Techniques

Networked control systems are spatially distributed systems in which the communication between sensors, actuators,and controllers occurs through a shared band-limited digital communication network. Several advantages of the network architectures include reduced system wiring, plug and play devices,increased system agility, and ease of system diagnosis and maintenance. Consequently, networked control is the current trend for industrial automation and has ever-increasing applications in a wide range of areas, such as smart grids, manufacturing systems,process control, automobiles, automated highway systems, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The modelling, analysis, and control of networked control systems have received considerable attention in the last two decades. The ‘control over networks’ is one of the key research directions for networked control systems. This paper aims at presenting a survey of trends and techniques in networked control systems from the perspective of ‘control over networks’, providing a snapshot of five control issues: sampled-data control, quantization control, networked control, event-triggered control, and security control. Some challenging issues are suggested to direct the future research.

Feedback Scheduling of Model-based Networked Control Systems with Flexible Workload

In this paper, a novel control structure called feedback scheduling of model-based networked control systems is proposed to cope with a flexible network load and resource constraints. The state update time is adjusted according to the real-time network congestion situation. State observer is used under the situation where the state of the controlled plant could not be acquired. The stability criterion of the proposed structure is proved with time-varying state update time. On the basis of the stability of the novel system structure, the compromise between the control performance and the network utilization is realized by using feedback scheduler.Examples are provided to show the advantage of the proposed control structure.

Aperiodic Sampled-Data Control of Distributed Networked Control Systems Under Stochastic Cyber-Attacks

This paper examines the stabilization problem of a distributed networked control system under the effect of cyberattacks by employing a hybrid aperiodic triggering mechanism.The cyber-attack considered in the paper is a stochastic deception attack at the sensor-controller end. The probability of the occurrence of attack on a subsystem is represented using a random variable. A decentralized hybrid sampled-data strategy is introduced to save energy consumption and reduce the transmission load of the network. In the proposed decentralized strategy, each subsystem can decide independently whether its state should be transmitted to the controller or not. The scheme of the hybrid triggering mechanism for each subsystem composed of two stages: In the first stage, the next sampling instant is computed using a self-triggering strategy. Subsequently, in the second stage, an event-triggering condition is checked at these sampling instants and the control signal is computed only if the event-triggering condition is violated. The self-triggering condition used in the first stage is dependent on the selection of eventtriggering condition of the second stage. Finally, a comparison of the proposed approach with other triggering mechanisms existing in the literature is presented in terms of the sampling instants,transmission frequency and performance measures through simulation examples.

Security Control for Uncertain Networked Control Systems under DoS Attacks and Fading Channels

This paper characterizes the joint effects of plant uncertainty,Denial-of-Service(DoS)attacks,and fading channel on the stabilization problem of networked control systems(NCSs).It is assumed that the controller remotely controls the plant and the control input is transmitted over a fading channel.Meanwhile,considering the sustained attack cycle and frequency of DoS attacks are random,the packet-loss caused by DoS attacks is modelled by a Markov process.The sampled-data NCS is transformed into a stochastic form with Markov jump and uncertain parameter.Then,based on Lyapunov functional method,linear matrix inequality(LMI)-based sufficient conditions are presented to ensure the stability of uncertain NCSs.The main contribution of this article lies in the construction of NCSs based on DoS attacks into Markov jump system(MJS)and the joint consideration of fading channel and plant uncertainty.

Designing Discrete Predictor-Based Controllers for Networked Control Systems with Time-varying Delays:Application to A Visual Servo Inverted Pendulum System

A discrete predictor-based control method is developed for a class of linear time-invariant networked control systems with a sensor-to-controller time-varying delay and a controller-to-actuator uncertain constant delay,which can be potentially applied to vision-based control systems.The control scheme is composed of a state prediction and a discrete predictor-based controller.The state prediction is used to compensate for the effect of the sensor-to-controller delay,and the system can be stabilized by the discrete predictor-based controller.Moreover,it is shown that the control scheme is also robust with respect to slight message rejections.Finally,the main theoretical results are illustrated by simulation results and experimental results based on a networked visual servo inverted pendulum system.

Compensated methods for networked control system with packet drops based on compressed sensing

Due to unreliable and bandwidth-limited characteristics of communication link in networked control systems,the realtime compensated methods for single-output systems and multioutput systems are proposed in this paper based on the compressed sensing(CS)theory and sliding window technique,by which the estimates of dropping data packets in the feedback channel are obtained and the performance degradation induced by packet drops is reduced.Specifically,in order to reduce the cumulative error caused by the algorithm,the compensated estimates for single-output systems are corrected via the regularization term;considering the process of single-packet transmission,a new sequential CS framework of sensor data streams is introduced to effectively compensate the dropping packet on single-channel of multi-output systems;in presence of the medium access constraints on multi-channel,the communication sequence for scheduling is coupled to the algorithm and the estimates of the multiple sensors for multi-output systems are obtained via the regularization term.Simulation results illustrate that the proposed methods perform well and receive satisfactory performance.

A Dual-Channel Secure Transmission Scheme for Internet-Based Networked Control Systems

Two significant issues in Internet-based networked control systems (INCSs),transport performance of different protocols and security breach from Internet side,are investigated. First,for improving the performance of data transmission,user datagram protocol (UDP) is adopted as the main stand for controllers and plants using INCSs. Second,a dual-channel secure transmission scheme (DCSTS)based on data transmission characteristics of INCSs is proposed,in which a raw UDP channel and a secure TCP (transmission control protocol) connection making use of SSL/TLS (secure sockets layer/transport layer security) are included. Further,a networked control protocol (NCP) at application layer for supporting DCSTS between the controllers and plants in INCSs is designed,and it also aims at providing a universal communication mechanism for interoperability of devices among the networked control laboratories in Beijing Institute of Technology of China,Central South University of China and Tokyo University of Technology of Japan. By means of a networked single-degree-of-freedom robot arm,an INCS under the new protocol and security environment is created. Compared with systems such as IPSec or SSL/TLS,which may cause more than 91% network throughput deduction,the new DCSTS protocol may yield results ten times better,being just 5.67%.

Quantization and Event-Triggered Policy Design for Encrypted Networked Control

This paper proposes a novel event-driven encrypted control framework for linear networked control systems(NCSs),which relies on two modified uniform quantization policies,the Paillier cryptosystem,and an event-triggered strategy.Due to the fact that only integers can work in the Pailler cryptosystem,both the real-valued control gain and system state need to be first quantized before encryption.This is dramatically different from the existing quantized control methods,where only the quantization of a single value,e.g.,the control input or the system state,is considered.To handle this issue,static and dynamic quantization policies are presented,which achieve the desired integer conversions and guarantee asymptotic convergence of the quantized system state to the equilibrium.Then,the quantized system state is encrypted and sent to the controller when the triggering condition,specified by a state-based event-triggered strategy,is satisfied.By doing so,not only the security and confidentiality of data transmitted over the communication network are protected,but also the ciphertext expansion phenomenon can be relieved.Additionally,by tactfully designing the quantization sensitivities and triggering error,the proposed event-driven encrypted control framework ensures the asymptotic stability of the overall closedloop system.Finally,a simulation example of the secure motion control for an inverted pendulum cart system is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Analysis of Stealthy False Data Injection Attacks Against Networked Control Systems:Three Case Studies

This paper mainly investigates the security problem of a networked control system based on a Kalman filter.A false data injection attack scheme is proposed to only tamper the measurement output,and its stealthiness and effects on system performance are analyzed under three cases of system knowledge held by an attacker and a defender.Firstly,it is derived that the proposed attack scheme is stealthy for a residual-based detector when the attacker and the defender hold the same accurate system knowledge.Secondly,it is proven that the proposed attack scheme is still stealthy even if the defender actively modifies the Kalman filter gain so as to make it different from that of the attacker.Thirdly,the stealthiness condition of the proposed attack scheme based on an inaccurate model is given.Furthermore,for each case,the instability conditions of the closed-loop system under attack are derived.Finally,simulation results are provided to test the proposed attack scheme.

Communication security of autonomous ground vehicles based on networked control systems:The optimized LMI approach

The paper presents a study of networked control systems(NCSs)that are subjected to periodic denial-of-service(DoS)attacks of varying intensity.The use of appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals(LKFs)help to reduce the constraints of the basic conditions and lower the conservatism of the criteria.An optimization problem with constraints is formulated to select the trigger threshold,which is solved using the gradient descent algorithm(GDA)to improve resource utilization.An intelligent secure event-triggered controller(ISETC)is designed to ensure the safe operation of the system under DoS attacks.The approach is validated through experiments with an autonomous ground vehicle(AGV)system based on the Simulink platform.The proposed method offers the potential for developing effective defense mechanisms against DoS attacks in NCSs.

Consensus of networked control multi-agent systems using a double-layer encryption scheme

This paper addresses the decentralized consensus problem for a system of multiple dynamic agents with remote controllers via networking,known as a networked control multi-agent system(NCMAS).It presents a challenging scenario where partial dynamic entities or remote control units are vulnerable to disclosure attacks,making them potentially malicious.To tackle this issue,we propose a secure decentralized control design approach employing a double-layer cryptographic strategy.This approach not only ensures that the input and output information of the benign entities remains protected from the malicious entities but also practically achieves consensus performance.The paper provides an explicit design,supported by theoretical proof and numerical verification,covering stability,steady-state error,and the prevention of computation overflow or underflow.

Stability Analysis of Event-Triggered Networked Control Systems with Time-Varying Delay and Packet Loss

Networked control systems(NCSs) are facing a great challenge from the limitation of network communication resources. Event-triggered control(ETC) is often used to reduce the amount of communication while still keeping a satisfactory performance of the system, by transmitting the measurements only when an event-triggered condition is satisfied. However, some network-induced problems would happen inevitably, such as communication delay and packet loss, which can degrade the control performance significantly and can even lead to instability. In this paper, a periodic eventtriggered NCS considering both time-varying delay and packet loss is studied. The system is discretized into a piecewise linear system with uncertainty. Then the model is handled by a polytopic overapproximation method to be more suitable for stability analysis. Finally, stability conditions are obtained and presented in terms of linear matrix inequalities(LMIs). The result is illustrated by a numerical example.

Predictive Event-Triggered Control for Disturbanced Wireless Networked Control Systems

The control and scheduling for wireless networked control system with packet dropout and disturbance are investigated.A prediction based event triggered control is proposed to reduce data transmissions while preserving the robustness against external disturbance.First,a trigger threshold is especially designed to maintain the difference of the estimated and actual states below a proper boundary when system suffers from packet dropout.Then a predictive controller is designed to compensate for packet dropouts by utilizing the packet-based control approach.The sufficient conditions to ensure the closed-loop system being uniformly ultimately bounded are derived,with consequently the controller gain method.Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Finite-time non-fragile filtering for nonlinear networked control systems via a mixed time/event-triggered transmission mechanism

This paper is aimed at investigating the problem of mixed time/event-triggered finite-time non-fragile filtering for nonlinear networked control systems with delay.First,a fuzzy nonlinear networked control system model is established by interval type-2(IT2)Takagi-Sugeno(T-S)fuzzy model,the designed non-fragile filter resolves the filter parameter uncertainties and uses different membership functions from the IT2 T-S fuzzy model.Second,a novel mixed time/event-triggered transmission mechanism is proposed,which decreases the waste of network resources.Next,Bernoulli random variables are used to describe the cases of random switching mixed time/event-triggered transmission mechanism.Then,the error filtering system is designed by considering a Lyapunov function and a sufficient condition of finite-time boundedness.In addition,the existence conditions for the finite-time non-fragile filter are given by the linear matrix inequalities(LMIs).Finally,two simulation results are presented to prove the effectiveness of the obtained method.

Optimal Output Tracking Control and Stabilization of Networked Control Systems with Packet Losses

This paper studies the optimal output tracking control and stabilization for networked control systems with packet losses via output feedback control.Both finite-horizon and infinite-horizon cases are considered.For the finite-horizon case,the authors introduce an augmented system according to the state variable and the reference trajectory for the first time.Based on a set of difference Riccati equations,an optimal output feedback tracking controller is proposed by applying the stochastic maximum principle.And an optimal estimator is presented.For the infinite-horizon case,a necessary and sufficient condition for the stabilization of the system is provided.And an optimal output feedback stabilizing tracking controller is obtained by establishing a set of algebraic Riccati equations.Finally,numerical examples are given to verify the proposed results.

Fault Detection of Networked Control Systems with Uncertain Time-Varying Delay and Quantization Error

Problems related to fault detection of networked control systems (NCSs) with both uncertain time-varying delay and quantization error are studied in this paper. A novel model with the form of polytopic uncertainty is given to represent the influences of both the time-varying delay and the quantization error, and then the reference model based method is used to design the residual generator that is robust to both unknown network-induced delay and unknown inputs. A numerical example is also given to illustrate the merits of the presented method. The proposed method can be regarded as an extension of the authors' former work, which can only deal with time-varying delay.

Observer design for descriptor networked control systems with unknown and partially known inputs

Sufficient conditions are given for the existence of unknown and partially known input normal and descriptor observers for a class of descriptor discrete time networked control systems.It is shown that a causal and regular descriptor system subjected to input and output periodic communication constraints,can be down sampled into a causal and regular p-lifted time invariant system.According to the lifted formulation,interesting results on minimum and maximum feasible values for communication sequence periods are drawn for the existence of an unknown or partially known input observer.The case of partially known input observer,cover unknown input case as an extreme case.An example is given for clarification.

LESO-based Position Synchronization Control for Networked Multi-Axis Servo Systems With Time-Varying Delay

The position synchronization control(PSC) problem is studied for networked multi-axis servo systems(NMASSs) with time-varying delay that is smaller than one sampling period. To improve the control performance of the system, time-varying delays, modeling uncertainties, and external disturbances are first modeled as a lumped disturbance. Then, a linear extended state observer(LESO) is devised to estimate the system state and the lumped disturbance, and a linear feedback controller with disturbance compensation is designed to perform individual-axis tracking control. After that, a cross-coupled control approach is used to further improve synchronization performance. The bounded-input-bounded-output(BIBO) stability of the closedloop control system is analyzed. Finally, both simulation and experiment are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Networked Control Approach for Distributed Generation Systems

Microgrid has emerged as an answer to growing demand for distributed generation(DG) in power systems. It contains several DG units including microalternator, photovoltaic system and wind generation. It turns out that sustained operation relies on the stability of these constituent systems. In this paper, a microgrid consisting of microalternator and photovoltaic system is modeled as a networked control system of systems(So S)subjected to packet dropouts and delays. Next, an observerbased controller is designed to stabilize the system in presence of the aforementioned communication constraints and simulation results are provided to support the control design methodology.