Building a Bridge Between Control and Communication via Topologies

The topology of a communication system is crucial in determining data transmission. Although significant research has been conducted on the integration of control and communication, existing studies on communication for control systems predominantly emphasize control aspects and warrant further exploration. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on the impacts of topology changes on control systems. This article aims to establish a connection between control and communication via communication topology, examining how communication topologies affect controllers. This article also analyzes the relationship between communication and control in depth. For static topologies, specific controller forms are derived from a general controller to illustrate the impacts of static topologies on controllers. In dynamic topologies, communication is nondeterministic, so whether a controller can receive data from other nodes is nondeterministic. Therefore, controller forms in which some coefficients are random variables following a probability distribution are derived. We utilize them to establish a close connection between control and communication. Furthermore, extensive simulations are conducted to investigate the impact of different topologies on the control system.