Performance limitations of networked control systems with quantization and packet dropouts

Abstract This paper investigates the problem of optimal tracking performance of networked control systems (NCSs) with quantization and packet-dropouts. The system under consideration is linear time-invariant (LTI), multi-input multi-output (MIMO), where an H 2 norm of error signal between the reference input and the system output is used as the tracking performance index. The impacts of packet-dropouts in the communication channel and the quantized input and output are studied. The goal is to obtain the minimal error in tracking a random signal, by searching through all possible stabilizing two-parameter controllers. It is shown that, the minimum value of tracking error is closely related to the reference input signal direction, the non-minimum phase zeros and unstable poles of the given plant, including the locations and directions. We also demonstrated the quantization error and the packet-dropouts may degrade the tracking performance. A typical example is given to evaluate the theoretical results.