Control with communication constraints

An emerging area of importance in control science is that of networked control. Within this framework one considers the impact of communication constraints on the performance of feedback control systems. The topic bridges the traditional areas of control, communications and information theory. In this paper we will focus on the practical application of these ideas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a major area of application arises in the control of communication systems themselves since, here, the control commands and measurements are invariably sent over the same communication channels as are used for data. These channels are subject to imperfections including quantization, lost packets, random delays and decentralized architectures. Hence the associated control problems are quintessential examples of control subject to communication constraints. The paper will review several of these problems and point to future research challenges.