Event-Triggered Fuzzy-Networked Control System for a 3-DOF Quadcopter with Limited-Bandwidth Communication

Quadcopters are attracting widespread attention due to their growing demand for use in various applications. Since wired communication would severely restrict a quadcopter’s range, maneuverability, and applications, quadcopters usually communicate via wireless networks. Although wireless communication allows the freedom of movement necessary for a wide array of quadcopter applications, it is subject to bandwidth constraints. When multiple quadcopters operate simultaneously, the bandwidth of a wireless network will not meet the requirements. To address this issue, we propose an event-triggered fuzzy-networked control system for 3-DOF quadcopters that reduces the bandwidth requirement. We utilized a fuzzy-networked controller to control a 3-DOF quadcopter. After that, we adopted an event-triggered control approach to reduce the bandwidth requirement. Using the proposed method, one only needs to translate the signals while the event-triggering condition is satisfied, thus reducing the amount of data transmitted over the network. Also, to analyze the stability of the overall system, the Lyapunov stability theorem was adopted. Finally, the proposed method was validated through a 3-DOF quadcopter simulation model. The computer simulations are presented to demonstrate that the proposed control strategy enables a 75.2% (without external disturbance) reduction in bandwidth, which is sufficient to achieve the control objective. This reflects the fact that the proposed control scheme can achieve good control performance with relatively little bandwidth resources and indicates its potential to allow scalable deployment of UAVs.