Digital control of multiple discrete passive plants over networks

This paper provides a passivity based framework to synthesise l m 2 -stable digital control networks in which m strictly-output passive controllers can control n – m strictly-output passive plants. The communication between the plants and controllers can tolerate time varying delay and data dropouts. In particular, we introduce a power-junction-network, a general class of input-output-wave-variable-network which allows even a single controller (typically designed to control a single plant) to accurately control the output of multiple plants even if the corresponding dynamics of each plant is different. In addition to the power-junction-network we also introduce a Passive Downsampler (PDS) and Passive Upsampler (PUS) in order to further reduce networking traffic while maintaining stability and tracking properties. A detailed (soft real-time) set of examples shows the tracking performance of the networked control system.