In this paper, we examine the influence of communication latency on performance of networked control systems. Even though distributed control architectures offer advantages in terms of communication, maintenance costs, and scalability, it is an open question how communication latency that varies with network topology influences closed-loop performance. For networks in which delays increase with the number of links, we establish the existence of a fundamental performance trade-off that arises from control architecture. In particular, we utilize consensus dynamics with single- and double-integrator agents to show that, if delays increase fast enough, a sparse controller with nearest neighbor interactions can outperform the centralized one with all-to-all communication topology.

翻译：本文研究了通信延迟对网络化控制系统性能的影响。尽管分布式控制架构在通信、维护成本和可扩展性方面具有优势，但随网络拓扑变化的通信延迟如何影响闭环性能仍是一个开放问题。对于延迟随链路数量增加的网络，我们建立了控制架构所导致的基本性能权衡机制的存在性。具体而言，我们利用具有单积分器和双积分器智能体的一致性动力学证明：若延迟增长足够快，采用最近邻交互的稀疏控制器可优于具有全连通通信拓扑的集中式控制器。