Towards Energy-Efficient Communication Management in the Distributed Control of Networked Cyber-Physical Systems
For researchers in distributed control of cyber-physical systems, this work offers an incremental improvement over potential-based methods by introducing variable communication ranges to reduce energy consumption.
The paper proposes an energy-efficient distributed communication management strategy for consensus in networked cyber-physical systems, using variable communication ranges to reduce energy consumption while guaranteeing consensus. Simulations demonstrate effectiveness.
In this paper, we study the distributed control of networked cyber-physical systems when a much more energy-efficient distributed communication management strategy is proposed to solve the well-studied consensus problem. In contrast to the existing potential-based network topology control method, the proposed topology control method is based on the variation of communication ranges such that each agent can control its ad hoc communication range. The proposed network topology control technique can not only guarantee network connectivity but also reduce the communication energy. We apply the new network topology control technique, based on variable communication ranges, in a well-studied consensus problem, where the communication range for each agent is designed locally along with a new bounded control algorithm. Theoretical analysis is then provided to show that the proposed network topology control technique can guarantee consensus with bounded communication energy consumption. Finally, simulation examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed energy-efficient distributed topology control technique.