Minimum Data Rate for Exponential Stability of Networked Control Systems with Medium Access Constraints

In this paper, we investigate the minimum data rate problem to guarantee the stability of the networked control systems (NCSs) suffered to the medium access constraints in the digital communication channel. Under the effect of medium access constraints, the data rate of each communication node switches between its pre-set value and zero according to the medium access status assigned by the scheduler. In order to guarantee the exponential stability, a new analysis approach combined with the average dwell time technique and entropy theory is established for the unstable scalar systems and vector systems to obtain the sufficient and necessary conditions for each subsystem. The obtained minimum data rate are related to the intrinsic entropy rate of the system and the duty factor allocated by the scheduler. An numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the designed minimum data rate for the NCSs which composed by a collection of subsystems.