Stability analysis of networked control systems subjected to packet-dropouts and finite level quantization

In this paper, we study the stability of a networked control system involving signal quantization with finitely many levels and a bounded number of consecutive packet-dropouts. To compensate for the effect of packet-dropouts, the controller-encoder sends a packet which contains possible quantized control inputs for finite future steps. At the receiving end, i.e., at the plant actuator side, a buffer decides the actuator input based on the received data. The buffer has memory which is overwritten whenever it receives a packet from the controller. Within this setting, we derive a sufficient condition on quantization parameters for achieving small ℓ^∞ signal ℓ^∞ stability of the feedback system. The stability condition is characterized in terms of the number of quantization levels of the quantizer.