Design of distributed controllers with constrained and noisy links

In this paper we consider some design aspects of distributed controllers that guarantee a ℋ_∞X performance level. In particular, we consider two design problems. First, is the case where, without loss of generality, there are two distributed subcontrollers connected to a (generalized) plant and the interest is placed in minimizing the number of noise-free (and dynamics free) communication channels between the subcontrollers needed to provide a given performance. The second is the case where, given a distributed controller designed in the first case, communication noise is present and we seek an optimal choice of the communication signals to guarantee a performance level while keeping the communication signal to noise power limited. We take a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach to provide solution procedures to these problems and present examples that demonstrate their efficiency.