Deployment-Aware Controller and Control Architecture Co-Design via Mixed-Integer Output-Feedback SLS

Abstract

We study controller and control-architecture co-design for output-feedback systems under a hard budget. The architecture activates sensors and actuators and selects among directed communication-service options with specified delivery bounds and costs. Direct optimization over controller transfer matrices and discrete deployments is mixed-integer nonconvex; convex alternatives fix the architecture, use regularization, or impose a quadratically invariant (QI) controller-information pattern. We instead optimize finite impulse response (FIR) output-feedback system-level synthesis (OF-SLS) responses. Binary variables select devices and service options; cumulative binaries record whether the selected service can deliver by each FIR lag. Indicator constraints zero response coefficients that would require unavailable messages. For fixed device and OF-SLS realization-state locations, this yields an exact mixed-integer convex program (MICP) over finite service menus and deployment constraints. Every feasible response admits the standard OF-SLS implementation using only the selected devices and services. In a three-follower platoon, 2736 of 139,968 stabilizable and detectable deployments are QI-compatible. All three actuators are necessary, whereas intermediate-budget optima retain strict subsets of seven sensor packages. At a common budget, the best QI design has 3.86 times the performance loss of the co-design optimum relative to the dense deployment.