Distributed event-triggered output feedback control with cloud-assisted observer

Recent rapid development of information and communication technology enables cloud computing to be utilized in many engineering applications. A state estimation of a large-scale system consisting of several subsystems needs a large amount of computational resources. So, this paper proposes an observer that estimates all states of the system using cloud computing. We will call such an observer a cloud-assisted observer. A data network is used to transmit outputs of the subsystems from local sensors to the observer and control inputs from the observer to local actuators. To reduce the amount of the data transmission, we propose a distributed event-triggered control method, where two kinds of triggering mechanisms are used: one for local sensors and the other for the observer. Then, we show that the input-to-state stability of the extended system consisting of the controlled large-scale system and the observer. In addition, we show that triggering periods of all subsystems and the cloud-assisted observer bounded below by positive constants. Finally, we perform a simulation to show the input-to-state stability of the extended system.