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Results for “distributed control networks”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Neural Networks-Based Inverter Control: Modeling and Adaptive Optimization for Smart Distribution Networks

The optimal voltage control of inverter-based resources, especially under the high penetration of solar photovoltaics, is critical to the stability of the distribution power system. However, the computational complexity as well as the coordinated operation performance of the voltage control optimization in the distribution power system limits the real-time applications. To mitigate this issue, a model-free based adaptive optimal control scheme for the smart inverter is proposed to maximize the active power generation, minimize the power loss, and maintain the bus voltages in smart distribution networks. An inverter-based optimization model for coordinated operation is first established, considering the uncertainties of renewable power generation. Subsequently, by collecting the data and control strategies, the neural networks (NNs) based algorithm is proposed to efficiently predict the best possible control strategy. The main objective of this scheme is to accurately predict candidate optimal solutions with near-negligible feasibility and optimization gaps, with the advantage of avoiding complicated iteration-based numerical algorithms. Thereafter, the co-simulation among OpenDSS, MATLAB, and Python is set up to fully take advantage of the three individual software. Experiments are conducted based on different control parameter characteristics and structures of NNs. Finally, the results reveal that an average mean squared error of 0.013 and 1 ms response time are achieved, which is lower than some state-of-the-art methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Constellation: The autonomous control and data acquisition system for dynamic experimental setups

The operation of instruments and detectors in laboratory or beamline environments presents a complex challenge, requiring stable operation of multiple concurrent devices, often controlled by separate hardware and software solutions. These environments frequently undergo modifications, such as the inclusion of different auxiliary devices depending on the experiment or facility, adding further complexity. The successful management of such dynamic configurations demands a flexible and robust system capable of controlling data acquisition, monitoring experimental setups, enabling seamless reconfiguration, and integrating new devices with limited effort. This paper presents Constellation, a flexible and network-distributed control and data acquisition software framework tailored to laboratory and beamline environments, that addresses the limitations of existing solutions. The framework is designed with a focus on extensibility, providing a streamlined interface for instrument integration. It supports efficient system setup via network discovery mechanisms, promotes stability through autonomous operational features, and provides comprehensive documentation and supporting tools for operators and application developers such as controllers and logging interfaces. At the core of the architectural design is the autonomy of the individual components, called satellites, which can make independent decisions about their operation and communicate these decisions to other components. This paper introduces the design principles and framework architecture of Constellation, presents the available graphical user interfaces, shares insights from initial successful deployments, and provides an outlook on future developments and applications.

Autonomy↗
DOE OSTI2021

Ripple-Type Control for Enhancing Resilience of Networked Physical Systems: Preprint

Distributed control agents have been advocated as an effective means for improving the resiliency of our physical in-frastructures under unexpected events. While purely local control has been shown to be insufficient, centralized optimal resource allocation approaches can be slow. In this context, we put forth a hybrid low-communication saturation-driven protocol for the coordination of control agents that are distributed over a physicalsystem and are allowed to communicate with peers over a 'hot-line' communication network. According to this protocol, agents act upon on local readings unless their control resources have been depleted, in which case they send a beacon for assistance to peer agents. Our ripple-type scheme triggers communication locally only for the agents with saturated resources, and is proved to converge. Moreover, under a monotonicity assumption on the underlying physical law coupling control outputs to inputs, the devised control is proved to converge to a configuration satisfying safe operational constraints. The assumption is shown to hold for voltage control in electric power systems and pressure control in water distribution networks. Numerical tests on both networks corroborate the efficacy of the novel scheme.

distributed control↗
DOE OSTI2015

System-wide power management control via clock distribution network

An apparatus, method and computer program product for automatically controlling power dissipation of a parallel computing system that includes a plurality of processors. A computing device issues a command to the parallel computing system. A clock pulse-width modulator encodes the command in a system clock signal to be distributed to the plurality of processors. The plurality of processors in the parallel computing system receive the system clock signal including the encoded command, and adjusts power dissipation according to the encoded command.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2015

A Distributed Framework for Coordinated Heavy-Duty Vehicle Platooning

Heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) traveling in single file with small intervehicle distances experience reduced aerodynamic drag and, therefore, have improved fuel economy. In this paper, we attempt to maximize the amount of fuel saved by coordinating platoon formation using a distributed network of controllers. These virtual controllers, placed at major intersections in a road network, help coordinate the velocity of approaching vehicles so they arrive at the junction simultaneously and can therefore platoon. This control is initiated only if the cost of forming the platoon is smaller than the savings incurred from platooning. In a large-scale simulation of the German Autobahn network, we observe that savings surpassing 5% when only a few thousand vehicles participate in the system. These results are corroborated by an analysis of real-world HDV data that show significant platooning opportunities currently exist, suggesting that a slightly invasive network of distributed controllers, such as the one proposed in this paper, can yield considerable savings.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Performance of the Muon g - 2 calorimeter and readout systems measured with test beam data

A single calorimeter station for the Muon $g-2$ experiment at Fermilab includes the following subsystems: a 54-element array of PbF$_{2}$ Cherenkov crystals read out by large-area SiPMs, bias and slow-control electronics, a suite of 800 MSPS waveform digitizers, a clock and control distribution network, a gain calibration and monitoring system, and a GPU-based frontend read out through a MIDAS data acquisition environment. The entire system performance was evaluated using 2.5 - 5 GeV electrons at the End Station Test Beam at SLAC. This paper includes a description of the individual subsystems and the results of measurements of the energy response and resolution, energy-scale stability, timing resolution, and spatial uniformity. All measured performances meet or exceed the $g-2$ experimental requirements. Based on the success of the tests, the complete production of the required 24 calorimeter stations has been made and installation into the main experiment is complete. Furthermore, the calorimeter response measurements determined here informed the design of the reconstruction algorithms that are now employed in the running $g-2$ experiment.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRS1989

Distributed communications and control network for robotic mining

The application of robotics to coal mining machines is one approach pursued to increase productivity while providing enhanced safety for the coal miner. Toward that end, a network composed of microcontrollers, computers, expert systems, real time operating systems, and a variety of program languages are being integrated that will act as the backbone for intelligent machine operation. Actual mining machines, including a few customized ones, have been given telerobotic semiautonomous capabilities by applying the described network. Control devices, intelligent sensors and computers onboard these machines are showing promise of achieving improved mining productivity and safety benefits. Current research using these machines involves navigation, multiple machine interaction, machine diagnostics, mineral detection, and graphical machine representation. Guidance sensors and systems employed include: sonar, laser rangers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, clinometers, and accelerometers. Information on the network of hardware/software and its implementation on mining machines are presented. Anticipated coal production operations using the network are discussed. A parallelism is also drawn between the direction of present day underground coal mining research to how the lunar soil (regolith) may be mined. A conceptual lunar mining operation that employs a distributed communication and control network is detailed.

Schiffbauer, William H.↗
NASA NTRS1976

The unified data system - A distributed processing network for control and data handling on a spacecraft

This paper presents the results obtained in a continuing investigation of real-time distributed processing systems which is being conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A distributed processor architecture has been developed for control and data handling on a planetary spacecraft. This system, designated the Unified Data System, has been implemented in a feasibility breadboard. The following aspects of the Unified Data System are described: (1) standardized building block elements and their configuration into microprocessor modules, (2) a highly redundant bus structure which connects the various modules and facilitates intercommunications with minimal software support, (3) the structure of software within the individual modules and its coordination between modules, and (4) the mechanisms by which fault-tolerance can be implemented within the network. Through the attributes of multilevel standardization, simplicity, and flexibility, this system is expected to result in significant cost savings to future spacecraft missions.

Rennels, D. A.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Distributionally Robust Decentralized Volt-Var Control With Network Reconfiguration

Here, this paper presents a decentralized volt-var optimization (VVO) and network reconfiguration strategy to address the challenges arising from the growing integration of distributed energy resources, particularly photovoltaic (PV) generation units, in active distribution networks. To reconcile control measures with different time resolutions and empower local control centers to handle intermittency locally, the proposed approach leverages a two-stage distributionally robust optimization; decisions on slow-responding control measures and set points that link neighboring subnetworks are made in advance while considering all plausible distributions of uncertain PV outputs. We present a decomposition algorithm with an acceleration scheme for solving the proposed model. Numerical experiments on the IEEE 123 bus distribution system are given to demonstrate its outstanding out-of-sample performance and computational efficiency, which suggests that the proposed method can effectively localize uncertainty via risk-informed proactive timely decisions.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1990

Using CLIPS in a distributed system: The Network Control Center (NCC) expert system

This paper describes an intelligent troubleshooting system for the Help Desk domain. It was developed on an IBM-compatible 80286 PC using Microsoft C and CLIPS and an AT&T 3B2 minicomputer using the UNIFY database and a combination of shell script, C programs and SQL queries. The two computers are linked by a lan. The functions of this system are to help non-technical NCC personnel handle trouble calls, to keep a log of problem calls with complete, concise information, and to keep a historical database of problems. The database helps identify hardware and software problem areas and provides a source of new rules for the troubleshooting knowledge base.

Wannemacher, Tom↗
DOE OSTI2017

Control of Networked Traffic Flow Distribution: A Stochastic Distribution System Perspective

At signalized intersections, the traffic queues are controlled by traffic signal control settings and effective traffic lights control would realize both smooth traffic flow and minimize fuel consumption. Funded by the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems (EEMS) program of the Vehicle Technologies Office of the US Department of Energy, we performed a preliminary investigation on the modelling and control framework in context of urban network of signalized intersections. In specific, we developed a recursive input-output traffic queueing models. The queue formation can be modeled as a stochastic process where the number of vehicles entering each intersection is a random number. Further, we proposed a preliminary B-Spline stochastic modelling and control for a one-way single-lane corridor traffic system based on theory of stochastic distribution control that shapes the PDF of the queue length.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
NASA NTRS2016

A Network Scheduling Model for Distributed Control Simulation

Distributed engine control is a hardware technology that radically alters the architecture for aircraft engine control systems. Of its own accord, it does not change the function of control, rather it seeks to address the implementation issues for weight-constrained vehicles that can limit overall system performance and increase life-cycle cost. However, an inherent feature of this technology, digital communication networks, alters the flow of information between critical elements of the closed-loop control. Whereas control information has been available continuously in conventional centralized control architectures through virtue of analog signaling, moving forward, it will be transmitted digitally in serial fashion over the network(s) in distributed control architectures. An underlying effect is that all of the control information arrives asynchronously and may not be available every loop interval of the controller, therefore it must be scheduled. This paper proposes a methodology for modeling the nominal data flow over these networks and examines the resulting impact for an aero turbine engine system simulation.

distributed control↗
DOE OSTI2025

Virtual Agents-Based Attack-Resilient Distributed Control for Islanded AC Microgrid

Due to its dependence on a communication network, distributed secondary control of microgrids is susceptible to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in channel shutdown mode, which may negatively impact the network connectivity and thus deteriorate the coordination and power sharing among distributed generators (DGs). Honeypot is a common method for cyber deception by introducing fake targets. However, in the context of microgrid, the misleading information spread by honeypots will also impact the system performance. This paper proposes an attack-resilient distributed control for AC microgrids utilizing virtual agents (VAs) to counteract both DoS edge and node attacks. The VAs are designed to not impact the system’s steady state during normal operation but to share information among neighboring real agents and serve as dummy targets for DoS attacks. The control with VAs is implemented by a primal-dual gradient based distributed algorithm to efficiently obtain a practical solution for voltage/frequency regulation and power sharing. The simulation results on a 4-DG test system and a modified IEEE 34-bus system show that 1) VAs do not impact the normal functionality of the test system, and 2) deploying VAs can enhance the resilience of the microgrid control against DoS edge and node attacks.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1993

Distributed intelligent control and status networking

Over the past two years, the Network Control Systems Branch (Code 532) has been investigating control and status networking technologies. These emerging technologies use distributed processing over a network to accomplish a particular custom task. These networks consist of small intelligent 'nodes' that perform simple tasks. Containing simple, inexpensive hardware and software, these nodes can be easily developed and maintained. Once networked, the nodes can perform a complex operation without a central host. This type of system provides an alternative to more complex control and status systems which require a central computer. This paper will provide some background and discuss some applications of this technology. It will also demonstrate the suitability of one particular technology for the Space Network (SN) and discuss the prototyping activities of Code 532 utilizing this technology.

Fortin, Andre↗