Developing Optimal Attention Control Policies for Sensors and Actuators Scheduling in a Distributed Propulsion Control System

Digital communication channels are used to send control commands from control computer to actuators, andtransmit sensor information to control computer. These data may be used for safety-critical purposes, or monitoringpurposes. There is a need for computing communication bandwidth margins under all conditions encountered bydistributed propulsion control systems. Distributed computing environments differ from conventional environmentsin that there is the presence of a databus over which all messages are passed along. Limits on communicationsystems can dramatically impact the efficiency of control laws. In the context of limited communications, however,it is possible to quantify the degradation of the quality of control by devising optimal attention control policies. Suchattention control policies are founded on the fact that not all measurements or control data share the same value at agiven instant. It is therefore necessary to design optimal actuator/sensor scheduling policies that, given someavailable communication bandwidth, perform better than arbitrary scheduling policies. optoXense-Georgia-Techteam proposes optimal sensor/actuator scheduling policies by solving appropriate convex-optimization probleminvolving LMIs. In Phase-I, we will assess design trade-offs in the embedded system communication architectureand develop concepts for optimal sensor/actuator scheduling taking into consideration the impacts on controller and turbine-engine performance.