Optimal Controller Design for Networked Control Systems

This paper addresses the problem of optimal control system design for networked control systems. We focus on a situation where the plant is single-input single-output and the communication link between the controller and the plant is signal-to-noise ratio constrained. In this setting, we characterize the controllers that minimize the tracking error variance, while respecting the channel signal-to-noise ratio constraint. We also provide a description of the optimal tradeoff curve in the performance versus signal-to-noise ratio plane and, as a byproduct, we establish easily computable bounds on the achievable performance. We illustrate our results with a numerical example based on a bit rate limited channel.