Decentralized control of networked discrete event systems with communication delays

Abstract

In many practical systems, supervisory control is not performed by one centralized supervisor, but by multiple local supervisors. When communication networks are used in such a system as the medium of information transmission, the communication channels between local supervisors and the system to be controlled will unavoidably result in communication delays. This paper investigates how to use these local supervisors to control the system in order to satisfy given specifications even under communication delays. The specifications are described by two languages: a minimal required language which specifies the minimal required performance that the supervised system must have and a maximal admissible language which specifies the maximal boundary that the supervised system must be in. The results show that if the control problem is solvable, then there exists the minimal control policy which can be calculated based on state estimates. Furthermore, we derive algorithms to check whether the control problem is solvable or not.