Communication-Aware Motion Control Scheduling of Automatic Guided Vehicles for THz Beam Alignment in IIoT

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) communications are expected to provide ultra-high transmission rate to enable connected automatic guided vehicles (C-AGV) in future smart factories for the industrial internet of things (IIoT). However, beam alignment is extremely challenging due to its narrow beam-width and the fast mobility of C-AGV. To deal with this issue, we propose a novel communication-aware motion control scheduling method for THz beam alignment in this paper. Specifically, the accuracy state-feedback of the C-GAV’s motion control is very high, which has the potential to provide the necessary information for beam alignment, e.g., the location of the receiver. However, the feedback needs to be carefully designed not to increase the control consumption and meanwhile to maintain the beam alignment for the required transmission data rate. Thus, this paper adopts transmission data rate as the activation criterion for motion control of C-AGV, where the feedback is synchronous with the motion control activation. Based on that, the beam alignment maintaining the required transmission data rate can be maintained. Meanwhile, the control consumption can be significantly reduced, and control stability can be guaranteed. Finally, we obtain a closed-form expression for the threshold of the transmission data rate. Simulation results show remarkable performance gain of the proposed method.