LQG and Medium Access Control

The communication channel is a shared resource in networked control systems, and channel access at every instant cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, the authors propose a novel architecture for control over wireless networks with integrated Medium Access Control (MAC).They evaluate the impact of constrained channel access on the cost of controlling a single plant over a network and establish that the separation principle holds under certain conditions on the MAC. They arrive at a classification of random access methods for networked control systems and identify a structure for each method.