Breaking silos to guarantee control stability with communication over ethernet TSN

The cross-layer approach presented in this article involves co-designing a feedback controller’s parameters together with the schedule of an Ethernet network used for communicating state information and control signals. The temporal properties of an Ethernet network depend significantly on the schedules and routes of the data flows along switches. Researchers have studied various design-space exploration problems to synthesize Ethernet schedules and routes in the context of hard deadlines and worst-case latencies. In this article, researchers consider the joint control-communication synthesis of cyber–physical systems (CPSs) with Ethernet networks in automotive applications. The design variables researchers are considering in this article have traditionally been treated separately in organizational silos by different engineers. These design variables include control and stability, routing of network packets, and scheduling of network packets. This article illustrates the need to break silos by considering the control and communication synthesis problems in a crosslayer, integrated design approach to guarantee the stability of control applications closed by an Ethernet Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN).