Control-Aware Scheduling for Low Latency Wireless Systems with Deep Learning

We consider the problem of scheduling transmissions over low-latency wireless communication links to control various control systems. Low-latency requirements are critical in developing wireless technology for industrial control, but are inherently challenging to meet while also maintaining reliable performance. An alternative to ultra reliable low latency communications is a framework in which reliability is adapted to control system demands. We formulate the control-aware scheduling problem as a constrained statistical optimization problem in which the optimal scheduler is a function of current control and channel states. The scheduler is parameterized with a deep neural network, and the constrained problem is solved using techniques from primal-dual learning, which have a necessary model-free property in that they do not require explicit knowledge of channels models, performance metrics, or system dynamics to execute. The resulting control-aware deep scheduler is evaluated in empirical simulations and strong performance is shown relative to other model-free heuristic scheduling methods.