Input-Output Stability of Wireless Networked Control Systems

This paper provides a general framework for analyzing the stability of general nonlinear networked control systems (NCS) with disturbances in the setting of Lpstability. With general, weak sufficient conditions on the NCS, we are able to conclude much tighter performance bounds than [1] and [2] for a very wide class of NCS. We also define the notion of persistently exciting (PE) scheduling protocols, discuss how PE leads to Lpstability for high enough transmission rates and show that PE is a natural property to demand, especially in the design of wireless scheduling protocols. Our results are of wide applicability as the analyses require neither the existence nor explicit construction of Lyapunov functions and the performance and stability bounds are completely parameterized by properties of the "network-free" system and a single NCS parameter chosen in the design of the scheduling protocol.