Control and Scheduling Codesign

Recent evolutionary advances in information and communication technologies give rise to a new environment for Real Time Control Systems. This is a new dynamic environment that features both resource limitation and workload variability. As a consequence, the availability of the computing and/or communication resources becomes typically uncertain in modem Real Time Control Systems. In this context, the espQCtQd Quality of Control (QoC) of the systems cannot always be guaranteed by the traditional control systems design methodology that separates control from scheduling. From a resource scheduling perspective, the prevalent open loop scheduling schemes in real time systems obviously lack flexibility when applied to Real Time Control Systems operating in dynamic environments. To make the best use of available resources, more holistic principles and methods need to be developed. These requirements motivate the recent technological trend towards the convergence of computing, communication and control. This book is a monograph that covers our recent and original results in this direction. The main objectives of this work are: (1) To construct a unified framework of feedback scheduling that enables the integration of control with computing and communication. This framework will encompass a set of concrete feedback scheduling methods and algorithms that are applicable to different systems. With these methods and algorithms, solutions are provided for some key issues in feedback scheduling, thus promoting the emergence of this area. {2)To enable flexible QoC management in dynamic environments with uncertainty in resource availability.