Cover page Title Decentralized H ∞ Controller Design for Large-scale Wireless Structural S.pdf

Cover page Title: Decentralized ∞ Controller Design for Large-scale Wireless Structural Sensing and Control Systems Authors: Yang Wang Jerome P. Lynch Kincho H. Law (FIRST PAGE OF ARTICLE) ABSTRACT Wireless structural sensing has attracted much research interest in recent years. With actuation functionality incorporated in the design of the wireless sensing nodes, a wireless feedback structural control system can be constructed. For wireless structural control systems that face challenges in communication range, latency, and reliability, decentralized system architectures can provide promising solutions. This paper examines the use of a decentralized controller that minimizes the ∞ norm of a closed-loop system. Decentralized control solutions are developed for both continuous-time and discrete-time formulations. To evaluate the performance of the decentralized ∞ controller design, numerical simulations of the wireless control system are conducted using a 20-story benchmark structure with different decentralized system architectures. INTRODUCTION Real-time feedback control has been a topic of great interest to the structural engineering community in the last few decades [1]. A feedback structural control system includes a network of sensors, controllers, and actuators. In traditional feedback control systems, large amount of coaxial wiring is needed to connect the sensors, controllers, and actuators into an integrated system that features a feedback control loop. The cost for installing wires grows significantly as the size of the structure and the number of sensors and control devices increase. Furthermore, once a wired control sys