Abstract-- This paper considers the integration of communication and control with respect to the task of coordinated heading control for a group of N vehicles. The heading control employed on each vehicle is a discretization of the well-known Kuramoto model of nonlinearly coupled oscillators. Stability for both all-to-all and random one-to-all broadcasts is shown to be dependent on the coupling strength, K, and the time discretization, T. For a desired system performance, T imposes a tight deadline by which the state information (M bits) must be propagated through the communication network. Routing optimization with respect to minimizing energy consumption is formulated considering the T deadline. Multi-hopping is optimal if time permits, but one-to-all broadcasting is more energy efficient when M/T is sufficiently large.
Daniel J. Klein, Phillip Lee, Kristi A. Morgansen,