Distributed LQG Control under Event-Triggered Communication^*

In this work, we propose a distributed Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control scheme featuring event-triggered communication in order to reduce the communication load in the distributed setup. A consensus-based distributed state estimator is used, where only the nodes’ local state estimates need to be transmitted to neighboring nodes through the communication network at event instants. Then, each actuator node computes its own control input based on its estimate. We show that an advantageous trade-off can be found between the communication load of the setup and the control performance, achieving a similar control cost as the optimal centralized LQG controller in a distributed fashion, while also significantly reducing the communication load. The proposal is validated through formal analysis and simulation experiments.