Design issues arising in a networked control system architecture

We consider a networked control system architecture, where a centralized controller is connected to a set of actuators via a data-rate limited digital channel. The presence of the communication channel forces all data transmitted to be quantized and limits only one actuator to be addressed at a given time. Within this context, we present a networked controller aimed at optimizing performance and which incorporates coding. Furthermore, we propose a design procedure for the coder. The methodology allows one to trade-off channel utilization versus robustness with respect to transmission errors.