Distributed MPC with Prediction of Time-Varying Communication Delay

Abstract: The novel idea presented in this paper is to interweave distributed model predictive control with a reliable scheduling of the information that is interchanged between local controllers of the plant subsystems. To this end, a dynamic model of the communication network and a predictive scheduling algorithm are proposed, the latter providing predictions of the delay between sending and receiving information. These predictions can be used by the local subsystem controllers to improve their control performance, as exemplary shown for a platooning example.