Distributed multiple step ahead prediction considering communication delays.

Prediction is an essential part of predictive control and is widely applied in control engineering. In a distributed control system configuration, there are signal transmissions between local subsystems. Communication delays impose a limit on the achievable prediction performance. Even though there is a plethora of literatures available for multiple step ahead prediction under the centralised framework, they are traditional techniques that cannot be applied to the distributed framework due to the interactions between the different subsystems and communication delays that have not been taken into account. In this study, a technique for determining the distributed multiple step ahead prediction is proposed which is optimal in sense of the lowest total prediction error variance. The proposed approach is useful for designing optimal controllers or assessing the performance of the implemented control loop while the controller structure has the distributed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]