Control System Analysis of a Telemetry Network System (TmNS)

Abstract

On the surface, network-based telemetry systems would appear to be simple, stateless, information collecting entities. Unfortunately, the reality of networking technologies brings a hierarchy of control loops into the system setup. At the top level, the command and status collection data loop that users manipulate the system with is a feedback loop. The commands themselves are transmitted across the network through competing streams of data, which are guided and controlled by Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) mechanisms. TCP mechanisms themselves have control loops in order to avoid congestion, provide reliability, and generally optimize flow. These TCP streams flowing across a network fabric compete at choke points, such as network switches, routers, and wireless telemetry links - all of which are also guided by control loops. This paper discusses the hierarchy of control loops present in a TmNS, provides an analysis of how these loops interact, and describes key points to be considered for telemetry systems.