Control of sampled-data systems with variable sampling rate

This paper addresses stability and performance of sampled-data systems with variable sampling rate, where the change between sampling rates is decided by a scheduler. A motivational example is presented, where a stable continuous time system is controlled with two sampling rates. It is shown that the resulting system could be unstable when the sampling changes between these two rates, although each individual closed-loop system is stable under the designed controller that minimizes the same continuous loss function. Two solutions are presented in this paper. The first solution is to impose restrictions on switching sequences such that only stable sequences are chosen. The second solution presented is more general, where a piecewise constant state feedback control law is designed which guarantees stability for all possible variations of sampling rate. Furthermore, the performance defined by a continuous time quadratic cost function for the sampled-data system with variable sampling rate can be optimized using the proposed synthesis method.