Smart energy-aware sensors for event-based control

This paper proposes an event-based scheme to control a networked control system and to manage the radio-modes of its smart sensor node. The smart node is battery driven and is in charge of sensing the system and computing the control law which is sent to the receiver using a wireless channel. To save energy and to limit the amount of communication with the receiver, the smart node combines two techniques: event-based control and radio-mode management. The control law and radio-mode switching policy are derived jointly in a predictive finite receding horizon optimization problem. We derive a Model Predictive Controller using Dynamic Programming and we prove the stability of the obtained control law using the Input-to-State Stability framework. The main contribution of this paper is to take into account several low consuming radio-modes, e.g. Idle and Sleep and the energy-transition costs between modes. Most of the existing literature only considers one mode when the radio is not transmitting, i.e., the scheduling problem. As illustrated via simulations, our proposal has the potential of significant energy savings.