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Abstract

This paper explores the application of multi-loop Wireless Networked Control Systems (WNCS) for managing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) formations. A multi-antenna base station (BS) employs beamforming (BF) technology to communicate with and control multiple UAVs simultaneously. Given the inherent uncertainty and stochastic nature of wireless channels and control system dynamics, we propose a joint communication-control strategy to ensure an accurate, stable, and efficient system. Our objective is to minimize the weighted sum of state error and communication costs while maintaining system stability and adhering to transmission power constraints by adapting BF weight vectors. The benefits of the BF design are twofold: first, a good trade-off between communication costs and control stability is achieved due to the array gain from the multi-antenna controller. Second, the generation of multiple beams to control multiple UAVs simultaneously effectively resolves scheduling issues, enhancing the efficiency of limited radio spectrum and energy consumption. To address the resulting non-trivial probabilistic optimization problem, we adopt the Bernstein outage probability theorem to construct a semidefinite program relaxation. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed joint strategy.

Document Type

Article

Author's School

McKelvey School of Engineering

Author's Department

Electrical and Systems Engineering

Class Name

Electrical and Systems Engineering Undergraduate Research

Language

English (en)

Date of Submission

12-19-2024

Available for download on Friday, December 19, 2025

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