Optimized rate allocation for state feedback control over noisy channels

Optimal rate allocation in a networked control system with highly limited communication resources is instrumental to achieve satisfactory overall performance. In this paper, we propose a rate allocation technique for state feedback control in linear dynamic systems over a noisy channel. Our method consists of two steps: (i) the overall distortion is expressed as a function of rates at all time instants by means of high-rate quantization theory, and (ii) a constrained optimization problem to minimize the overall distortion is solved. We show that a non-uniform quantization is in general the best strategy for state feedback control over noisy channels. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate the proposed scheme, which is shown to have good performance compared to arbitrarily selected rate allocations.