An MPC-based nonlinear quantizer for bit rate constrained networked control problems with application to inner loop power control in WCDMA

Bit rate constraints are a major stumbling block in Networked Control. Despite several techniques to improve performance, such as encoder-decoder design, the achieved performance is typically poor when only a few bits are available. This problem appears explicitly in Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) where the control channel in WCDMA is implemented with a 1-bit constraint. In this paper we propose a new approach to this problem. Instead of focusing on the design of an encoder-decoder system for inner loop power control, we change the paradigm and, instead, focus on the design of an MPC-based controller for a fixed nonlinear decoder. We present simulations showing that the new scheme offer s significant performance advantages relative to existing algorithms.