Emulation-based stabilization of networked control systems implemented on FlexRay

We investigate the emulation controller design approach for nonlinear networked control systems (NCS) with FlexRay. FlexRay is a deterministic communication protocol which is increasingly used in the automotive industry as it provides a high bandwidth and allows for safety critical applications. It is characterized by pre-set communication cycles that are subdivided into static and dynamic segments; the data transmissions are scheduled by different rules depending on the segment. We propose for the first time a hybrid model of NCS with FlexRay for this purpose. We show, under reasonable assumptions, that the asymptotic stability property ensured by the controller in the absence of communication constraints is preserved when the latter is implemented over FlexRay with sufficiently frequent data transmission. In particular, we assume that on each communication segment, the data transmissions are governed by uniformly globally exponentially stable protocols. This covers the case when the round-robin protocol is implemented on the static segment and the try-once-discard protocol is implemented on the dynamic segment. We provide explicit maximum allowable transmission interval bounds that guarantee stability.