Control over a Hybrid MAC Wireless Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks and Control Systems are an essential part of the Smart Grid. We consider the problem of performing control over large complex networked systems with packet drops. More specifically, we are interested in improving the performance of the regulation of control loops when the communication is made over low-cost wireless networks. In control over wireless networks it is common to use Contention-Free (CF) schemes where no losses occur with the price of low scalability and complicated scheduling policies. In this work we propose a hybrid MAC and control architecture, where a small number of control loops with high demand of attention are scheduled in a CF scheme and well regulated loops are scheduled in a lossy, asynchronous and highly scalable, Contention-Access (CA) scheme. We model and analyze the performance of such system with Markov Jump Linear System (MJLS) tools and compare it with other architecture types. Performance is evaluated using a quadratic cost function of the state.