Deadband feedback-based scheduling approach for networked control system with variable sampling period

Reasonable information scheduling strategies in the networked control system (NCS) can improve the quality of service of the network, reduce the conflict of information transmission in the network, and improve the overall performance of the NCS. In order to improve the performance of the NCS, a deadband feedback-based scheduling approach for the NCS with a variable sampling period is proposed. For the NCS with multi control loops, considering the limitation of network bandwidth resources, the dynamic real-time adjustment of a multi-loop sampling period is achieved through network utilization prediction, network bandwidth configuration and sampling period calculation. Furthermore, deadband feedback scheduling is combined with a variable sampling period algorithm. Deadband is set in the sensor and controller nodes to effectively adjust the information flow of the forward channel and the feedback channel. The proposed scheduling approach can reduce the impact of network conflict and network delay on system stability, make the network resources allocated reasonably, save network data traffic, and improve the overall performance of the NCS. A NCS with five control loops is used as the simulation object and carried out by True Time toolbox. The simulation results show that the proposed scheduling approach can improve output control performance of the system, reduce integral absolute error value of the control loops, and improve network utilization. The overall control performance of the system is improved.