Communication–Control Co-Design in Wireless Networks: A Cloud Control AGV Example

Abstract

With the development of 5G and ultrareliable and low-latency communication (URLLC), wireless network for automation processes has important applications in the envisioned Industry 4.0. In general cloud control, communication and control systems are generally designed independently, which leads to substantial wireless resource consumption. This article analyzes and summarizes the existing communication–control co-design methods. The strong correlations between control and communication systems are analyzed and two kinds of communication–control co-design methods are summarized: 1) control optimization problem with communication constraints and 2) communication optimization problem with control constraints. This article proposes to find the essence of the co-design problem and then build an effective co-design model. Therefore, one of the use cases, the cloud control of automated guided vehicle (AGV) in a future factory, is presented. It is critically challenging to find the interaction between the AGV control system and communication system and build the co-design model. The coding rate threshold is optimized by adjusting control parameters. This article reveals that applying the communication–control co-design can lower the requirements on the coding rate and lower the consumption of wireless resources. This co-design method also achieves better results in the probability of system instability and the number of admissible AGVs.