
5228 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
Networked Predictive Control of Uncertain Systems
With Multiple Feedback Channels
Hongbo Song, Guo-Ping Liu, Fellow, IEEE, and Li Yu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper studies the design and stability analysis
of uncertain networked control systems with multiple feedback
channels. An observer-based networked predictive control (NPC)
method is proposed to compensate for the distributed delays and
packet dropouts in the feedback channels. Sufficient conditions are
presented for the closed-loop NPC system with distributed delays
and packet dropouts to be stable, both in constant and random
cases. A ball-and-beam system is employed to test the proposed
method. Both the simulation and experiment results demonstrate
the effectiveness of the method.
Index Terms—Delays, distributed, networked control systems
(NCSs), networked predictive control (NPC), observer-based
control, packet dropouts.
I. INTRODUCTION
A
NETWORKED control system (NCS) is a feedback con-
trol system whose control loops are closed via a network.
Compared with traditional non-NCSs, NCSs offer some attrac-
tive advantages such as low cost, easy maintenance, and high
efficiency. Therefore, NCSs have received increasing attention
in the last decade [1]–[4]. However, the insertion of a network
into the control loop will cause some new issues that traditional
control systems do not have. Among them, delay and packet
dropout are two issues that can severely degrade the system
performance or even cause instability and thus must be taken
into consideration in the controller design of NCSs [5]–[10].
Up to now, various methods have been presented to handle
the delay, t he packet dropout, or both of them in NCSs, such
as the stochastic system method [11], [12], the optimal control
method [13], [14], the time delay system method [15], [16], the
switched system method [17], [18], the r obust control method
[19], and so on. In this literature, the effects of the delay
and packet dropout were modeled into the closed-loop NCSs,
and the corresponding controller design methods were devel-
oped to stabilize the NCSs. As an alternative, [20] presented
Manuscript received February 26, 2012; revised July 20, 2012 and
September 9, 2012; accepted September 28, 2012. Date of publication
October 25, 2012; date of current version June 6, 2013. The work of H. Song
was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant 61273116. The work of G.-P. Liu was supported in part by the Na-
tional Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60934006 and Grant
61273104. The work of Li Yu was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grant 61104063 and Grant 61273117.
H. Song is with the College of Information, Zhejiang University of Finance
and Economics, Hangzhou 310018, China (e-mail: di7ganshb@163.com).
G.-P. Liu is with the Faculty of Advanced Technology, University of Glam-
organ, Pontypridd CF37 1DL, U.K., and also with the CTGT Center, Harbin
Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
L. Yu is with the Department of Automation, Zhejiang University of Tech-
nology, Hangzhou 310023, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2012.2225398
a networked predictive control (NPC) method that actively
compensates for the delay and packet dropout. The main feature
of NPC is to predict the future behavior of the system and to
take the corresponding control action according to the real-time
information of the delay and packet dropout. The NPC method
was shown to be effective in compensating for the delay and
packet dropout in NCSs [20].
Further studies on the NPC method were made in [21]–[30],
to name a few. For example, in [21] and [22], a state-space-
model-based NPC method was developed, which can deal
with multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) NCSs. In [25],
the problem of predictive control was studied for nonlinear
uncertain networked systems. In [26], an event-driven NPC
method was presented for single-input–single-output (SISO)
NCSs so that the synchronization problem can be avoided.
It should be pointed out that most of the existing results on
NPC considered SISO NCSs or considered MIMO NCSs but
assumed that the plant outputs are transmitted via one sensor
node. However, NCSs are distributed systems and are often in
large scale. Thus, the plant outputs may have to be transmitted
via separated sensor nodes, which make the NCSs with multiple
communication channels [1], [3]. In this case, the delays and
packet dropouts are distributed, and the former NPC methods
need to be modified to be implemented. Few results are con-
cerned with the NPC of systems with multiple communication
channels. In [31], the packet-based predictive control problem
was studied for NCSs with multiple feedback communication
channels. However, the stability analysis of the closed-loop
NCSs was not considered, and it is assumed that all the plant
states are measurable and that the system model is accurate.
Although the NPC method in [21] and [22] can deal with
the distributed delays and packet dropouts by using the queuing
method proposed in [32] and [33], i t will introduce some con-
servatism because it discards some of the useful real-time plant
outputs on purpose. Moreover, the plants in real world more or
less have uncertainty, but the system models in [21] and [22]
are considered to be time invariant. From both mathematical
and physical points of view, if we do not discard the useful
real-time data and use them for f eedback control instead, the
performance of the closed-loop NPC system will be improved
when the plant is an uncertain system. The above observations
motivate this paper on the NPC for uncertain systems with
multiple communication channels. However, this paper only
considers feedback channels and assumes forward channels to
be ideal for simplicity. Since forward channels and feedback
channels carry signals with different functions in NCSs, the
way of compensation in forward channels is different from the
one in feedback channels. Thus, it is much more difficult to
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