The Wireless Control Bus: Enabling Efficient Multi-hop Event-Triggered\n Control with Concurrent Transmissions

Abstract

Event-triggered control (ETC) holds the potential to significantly improve\nthe efficiency of wireless networked control systems. Unfortunately, its\nreal-world impact has hitherto been hampered by the lack of a network stack\nable to transfer its benefits from theory to practice specifically by\nsupporting the latency and reliability requirements of the aperiodic\ncommunication ETC induces. This is precisely the contribution of this paper.\nOur Wireless Control Bus (WCB) exploits carefully orchestrated network-wide\nfloods of concurrent transmissions to minimize overhead during quiescent,\nsteady-state periods, and ensures timely and reliable collection of sensor\nreadings and dissemination of actuation commands when an ETC triggering\ncondition is violated. Using a cyber-physical testbed emulating a water\ndistribution system controlled over a real-world multi-hop wireless network, we\nshow that ETC over WCB achieves the same quality of periodic control at a\nfraction of the energy costs, therefore unleashing and concretely demonstrating\nits full potential for the first time.\n