Preservation of system properties for networked linear, time-invariant control systems in the presence of switching delays

We consider a networked control system in which the controller must communicate with the sensors and actuators of the plant through a physical network with fewer communication channels than inputs and outputs. To handle such a system, one typically defines a periodic communication policy specifying which sensors and actuators are connected at any given time. This work considers the situation where the act of switching the physical access to the network takes a finite amount of time, during which no information can be sent. We consider both single-input, single-output and multiple-input, multiple-output, linear, time-invariant plants and determine conditions under which these switching delays cause the system to lose the properties of reachability and observability.