Communication Times Reconstruction in a Telecontrolled Client–Server Scheme: An Approach by Kalman Filter Applied to a Proprietary Real-Time Operating System and TCP/IP Protocol

Abstract

Nowadays, various systems were developed in the telecommunications field which make use of technologies for the transmission and reception of information. One of these technologies is the Internet, which was developed in tandem with scientific growth. Therefore, its application in the control of various industrial processes has a notable influence. In this context, there are industrial processes that, due to the potential danger they represent to human beings, must be controlled by means of a remote control system. Such systems can be implemented through client–server communication schemes, which form a network of computers to exchange information. In the exchange of information, delay times are generated. These inactivity times have a close relationship with the latency in the communication network and have a negative impact on the performance of closed-loop control systems. In this sense, for physical implementation, it is essential to measure and mathematically characterize their magnitudes in order to know their variability and thus be able to design control strategies that compensate for their effects. Hence, this research paper presents the reconstruction of the communication times measured from a telecontrol system, where it is assumed that only one subsystem acts as the controller and the other one acts as the controlled. In other words, this paper addresses a control scheme type of single-input-single-output system (SISO). This reconstruction is based on the Kalman filter, which estimates the communication times that are measured on an experimental test bench with a client–server communication scheme. Communication times are characterized as stochastic processes. So, in order to validate the reconstruction presented, the level of dependence between the random processes is evaluated by analyzing their moments of probability as well as their covariance moments. Finally, an analysis based on the mean square error is presented, through which it can be concluded that the reconstruction technique used allows one to know the dynamics of the communication times generated by the remote control process presented in this research.