CONCOM · Control Over Noisy Communication Media
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-10-01 → 2019-09-30
- EU contribution
- €263,385
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Control Over Noisy Communication Media
In the current technological era of ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the demand for control over noisy communication media (CONCOM) (see Image 1) is rapidly growing, promising new and exciting possibilities in a myriad of fields, such as Remote Surgery and Autonomous Driving. While the promises are great, so are the challenges of open problems from constructing practical schemes to determining the fundamental limits of control over communication media. Unfortunately, existing solutions fall short of providing satisfactory results due to their inherent incompatibility in their current form: traditional control of dynamical systems relies on feedback of its measured state that is available to the controller and allows it to adapt fast to any changes, while in traditional communications information is sent in a one-way fashion across long time epochs which result in large delays. In this realm, adapting according to the measured feedback with as small a delay as possible is of great importance, especially when the controlled system is unstable in the absence of feedback. Communications, on the other hand, deals with reliably conveying data between non-colocated nodes over noisy media. To that end, the existing traditional solutions make use of long error-correcting codes transmitted and processed in a one-way fashion (without feedback or interaction) across long time epochs, thus inhibiting its use in delay-critical control systems. The grand goal of this research was to build a unified framework for communication and control (CONCOM) that allows to determine the fundamental limits of stabilizability and control performance of dynamical systems over noisy communication links as well as designing practical schemes and codes that approach these limits.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Two of the fundamental theories within the discipline of electrical engineering are those of control and communication (along with its mathematical foundation, information theory [IT]). These theories have been studied extensively by mathematicians and engineers throughout the 20th century, and have gone separate ways.The primary objective of control theory is to stabilize and control the behaviour of a given dynamical system in a desired fashion by changing the system input according to its measured output (feedback). In this theory, adapting according to the feedback with minimal possible delay is of grave importance.The theories of communication and information deal with conveying reliably data over noisy media. IT seeks to determine the maximal reliable-communication rates possible, disregarding and often undermining delay and computational complexity. Communication theory attempts to approach the rates promised by IT using practical tools.In the past, control theory was mainly used in well-crafted closed engineering systems (e.g., car and aerospace industries). In the current technological era of ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the demand for control over noisy media is ever growing, enabling numerous new possibilities. Nonetheless, current theory and technology offer one of the following solutions: utilizing a communication scheme that improves reliability at the price of introducing a large delay and then trying to control the resulting system, or adapting solutions from classical control theory to control over unreliable media, known now as cyber-physical control.Indeed, due to the historic disjunction of these theories, no unified theory exists that determines the fundamental trade-off between communication reliability and rate, and delay and controllability. Developing such a unified “communication-control” framework can allow for a myriad of new exciting possibilities, such as remote surgery and self-driving cars, and is the aim of this research.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY · Tel AvivCoordinatorIsrael
- CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYCORP · PasadenaUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union