State Estimation of Multiple Plants over a Shared Communication Network

This paper considers state estimation for multiple plants over a shared communication network. Each linear time-invariant plant transmits information through the common network according to either a timetriggered or an event-triggered rule. For an event-triggered algorithm with CSMA (carrier sense multiple access), each plant is assumed to access the network based on a priority mechanism. For a time-triggered algorithm combined with TDMA (time division multiple access), each plant uses the network according to an off-line scheduling. Performance in terms of the communication frequency and the estimation error covariance is analytically characterized for some special cases. The main result is that event-triggered schemes may perform worse than time-triggered schemes when considering the effect of communication network.