US-12627425-B2 - Method, device and system for configuring communication link used for exchanging data related to cooperative control algorithm

US12627425B2US 12627425 B2US12627425 B2US 12627425B2US-12627425-B2

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to a method for configuring communication links between a plurality of communicating nodes. wherein the communication links are used for exchanging data related to a cooperative control algorithm, wherein the communicating nodes are arranged according to a regular formation, said method comprising: —selecting a candidate neighbor node communication pattern for the regular formation and a candidate value of at least one communication parameter; —determining a candidate communication performance profile; —estimating a control performance level of the cooperative control algorithm; —estimating an interference level generated by the communicating nodes; wherein different control performance levels and different interference levels are estimated for different candidate neighbor node communication patterns and different candidate values of the at least one communication parameter until a predetermined control performance criterion and a predetermined interference criterion are both satisfied.

Inventors

Arnaud Bouttier
Julien Guillet

Assignees

MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORPORATION

Dates

Publication Date: 20260512
Application Date: 20211012
Priority Date: 20210408

Claims (15)

1 . A method for configuring communication links between a plurality of communicating nodes, wherein the communication links are used for exchanging data related to a cooperative control algorithm, wherein the cooperative control algorithm comprises at least one control parameter, wherein the communicating nodes are arranged according to a fixed regular formation, said method comprising: selecting, by a reference device, a candidate neighbor node communication pattern among a plurality of predetermined neighbor node communication patterns for the regular formation and a candidate value of at least one communication parameter; determining, by the reference device, a candidate communication performance profile based on the candidate neighbor node communication pattern and on the candidate value of the at least one communication parameter; estimating, by the reference device, a control performance level of the cooperative control algorithm based on the at least one control parameter and on the candidate communication performance profile; estimating, by the reference device, an interference level generated by the communicating nodes when using the candidate neighbor node communication pattern and the candidate value of the at least one communication parameter; wherein different control performance levels and different interference levels are estimated for different candidate neighbor node communication patterns and different candidate values of the at least one communication parameter until a predetermined control performance criterion and a predetermined interference criterion are both satisfied, thereby identifying a reference set having a reference neighbor node communication pattern, a reference value of the at least one communication parameter and a reference communication performance profile; wherein all or part of the reference set is used for configuring communication links between communicating nodes.
2 . The method according to claim 1 , comprising further configuring the at least one control parameter by estimating different control performance levels and different interference levels for different candidate values of the at least one control parameter, wherein the reference set further comprises a reference value of the at least one control parameter used for configuring the cooperative control algorithm.
3 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the candidate communication performance profile is further estimated based on a propagation model and a communication performance model.
4 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein at least one communicating node performs a local adaptation of the value of the at least one communication parameter in order to achieve the reference communication performance profile on the communication links of said at least one communicating node.
5 . The method according to claim 1 , comprising determining a first reference communication performance profile and a second reference communication performance profile for the reference set, the second reference communication performance profile having a higher communication performance, such that: the control performance criterion is satisfied for both the first reference communication performance profile and the second reference communication performance profile; and the interference criterion is satisfied for at least the first reference communication performance profile.
6 . The method according to claim 5 , comprising obtaining a target robustness factor, and wherein at least one among the first reference communication performance profile and the second reference communication performance profile is determined based on said target robustness factor.
7 . The method according to claim 5 , wherein at least one communicating node performs a local adaptation of the value of the at least one communication parameter in order to achieve on the communication links of said at least one communicating node a communication performance profile bounded by the first reference communication performance profile and the second reference communication performance profile.
8 . The method according to claim 1 , comprising obtaining, by the reference device, a target convergence speed for the cooperative control algorithm, and wherein: the estimated control performance level is an estimated convergence speed of the cooperative control algorithm; the control performance criterion is satisfied when the estimated convergence speed is faster or equal to the target convergence speed.
9 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the interference criterion is satisfied when the estimated interference level is minimized or below a predetermined threshold.
10 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the cooperative control algorithm is a consensus algorithm.
11 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the reference device is one of the communicating nodes.
12 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, configure said at least one processor to carry out a method according to claim 1 .
13 . A device comprising a wireless communication unit and a processing circuit configured to carry out a method according to claim 1 .
14 . A communication system comprising a plurality of communicating nodes and at least one reference device according to claim 13 , said at least one reference device being one of the communicating nodes or separate from said communicating nodes.
15 . The communication system according to claim 14 , wherein the communicating nodes are embedded in respective vehicles of a vehicle platoon.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD The present disclosure relates to communication systems and relates more specifically to the cooperative control of multiple communicating nodes, a.k.a. multi-agent systems (MAS). BACKGROUND ART Cooperative control algorithms aim at enabling multiple communicating nodes to fulfill a common goal. For instance, the consensus algorithm aims at enabling multiple communicating nodes to achieve an agreement on a local control information. In practice, a number of communicating nodes exchange data with their neighbors to agree on a same local control information that enable them to work together in a coordinated fashion. When multiple communicating nodes agree on the value of the local control information, they are said to have reached a consensus. Cooperative control algorithms such as the consensus algorithm or the model predictive control (MPC) algorithm are often applied in formation control problems with applications to mobile robots, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), satellites, aircraft, spacecraft, automated highway systems, etc. Cooperative control algorithms can also be applied to non-formation related problems such as task assignment, payload transport, role assignment, air traffic control, synchronization, etc. A typical application of a cooperative control algorithm such as a consensus algorithm can be to measure the average temperature in a geographical area from a set of remote sensors, or to control a platoon of vehicles on a highway in order to e.g. maintain the geometrical arrangement of the vehicles of the platoon substantially constant over time. Owing to their principle, cooperative control algorithms require the communicating nodes to exchange data between them using communication links using any appropriate communication protocol. For instance, in the case of communicating nodes embedded in vehicles of a platoon of vehicles, the communication protocols may be for instance ITS-G5, IEEE WAVE or 3GPP Cellular-V2X standards, etc. Communication links, and in particular wireless communication links are prone to data packet losses that can significantly degrade the control performance of the cooperative control algorithm as compared to an ideal situation with no packet losses. At the same time, the cooperative control algorithm shall be able to react to unexpected perturbations at a speed significantly higher than the system's rate of change. For instance, in the case of a cooperative control algorithm applied by a platoon of vehicles on a highway in order to maintain said vehicles in a predetermined geometrical arrangement, it is can be easily understood that the cooperative control algorithm must react quickly to unexpected perturbations (e.g. due to wind). Hence, data packet losses need to be taken into account in order to guarantee that the cooperative control algorithm converges at a speed compliant with the cooperative control requirements. In conventional systems, the control layer (which manages the cooperative control algorithm) and the communication layer (which manages the communication links) are managed separately. The communication parameters of the communication links may be optimized in order to maximize the performance over the communication links, in an attempt to reduce data packet losses. In turn, the control parameters of the cooperative control algorithm are optimized in order to maximize the convergence speed (a.k.a. convergence rate) of the cooperative control algorithm. However, such an approach may lead to a situation in which both the communication performance over the communication links and the control performance of the cooperative control algorithm are unnecessarily over-dimensioned, which might further lead to coexistence issues when e.g. a plurality of platoons of vehicles are co-located in a same geographical area. Citation List Non Patent Literature NPL 1 S. Kar and J. M. F. Moura, “Sensor Networks with Random Links: Topology Design for Distributed Consensus”, in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 3315-3326, July 2008. NPL 2 S. Silva Pereira and A. Pages-Zamora, “Consensus in Correlated Random Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 59, n° 12, p. 6279-6284, 2011, doi: 10.1109/TSP.2011.2166552. NPL 3 Wei Ren, R. W. Beard, and E. M. Atkins, “A survey of consensus problems in multi-agent coordination”, in Proceedings of the 2005, American Control Conference, 2005, Portland, OR, USA, 2005, p. 1859-1864, doi: 10.1109/ACC.2005.1470239. SUMMARY OF INVENTION The present disclosure aims at improving the situation. In particular, the present disclosure aims at overcoming at least some of the limitations of the prior art discussed above, by proposing a solution for reducing the interference generated by exchanging, between the communicating nodes, data of the cooperative control algorithm while still ensuring that the cooperative control requirements are satisfied. For this purpo