Distributed Model Predictive Control with Event-Based Communication

In this thesis, several algorithms for distributed model predictive control over digital communication networks with parallel computation are developed and analyzed. Distributed control aims at efficiently controlling large scale dynamical systems which consist of interconnected dynamical systems by means of communicating local controllers. Such distributed control problems arise in applications such as chemical processes, formation control, and control of power grids. In distributed model predictive control the underlying idea is to solve a large scale model predictive control problem in a distributed fashion in order to achieve faster computation and better robustness against local failures. Distributed model predictive control often heavily relies on frequent communication between the local model predictive controllers. However, a digital communication network may induce uncertainties such as a communication delays, especially if the load on the communication network is high. One topic of this thesis is to develop a distributed model predictive control algorithm for subsystems interconnected by constraints and common control goals which is robust with respect to time-varying communication delays.