Networked Control Systems: a Perspective from Chaos

In this paper, a nonlinear system aiming at reducing the signal transmission rate in a networked control system is constructed by adding nonlinear constraints to a linear feedback control system. Its stability is investigated in detail. It turns out that this nonlinear system exhibits very interesting dynamical behaviors: in addition to local stability, its trajectories may converge to a nonorigin equilibrium or be periodic or just be random. Furthermore it exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions — a sign of chaos. Complicated bifurcation phenomena are exhibited by this system. After that, control of the chaotic system is discussed. All these are studied under scalar cases in detail. Some difficulties involved in the study of this type of systems are analyzed. Finally an example is employed to reveal the effectiveness of the scheme in the framework of networked control systems.