Computational Cost Reduction Method for Joint Optimization of Communication Scheduling and Control Inputs

The IEEE 802.15.4 beacon mode has been proposed as a wireless standard for controlling devices and systems. Its superframe consists of Contention Access Period (CAP) based on CSMA/CA and Contention Free Period (CFP) based on TDMA. Therefore, the controller needs to perform communication scheduling to determine whether to communicate with each plant to be controlled and, if so, which communication segment, CAP or CFP, to use. A Previous study proposed a joint optimization method for communication scheduling and control inputs for each controlled object based on Model Predictive Control (MPC). However, the conventional method involves a combinatorial optimization problem, leading to an exponential increase in computational complexity with respect to the number of control targets, slots, and prediction periods. In this study, we propose a sequential optimization method that increases the computational complexity only linearly with respect to these factors. Simulation results demonstrate that the effectiveness of the proposed method in reducing the computational complexity while also evaluating its performance degradation.