Unified Communication and Control Framework to Improve Building Response in Earthquakes

In this paper, we focuse on mitigating the damage due to a seismic event in a mid-size building using wireless structure control (WSC). We consider the nature of wireless communication channels and integrates it into a structural control system that minimizes the building response to external excitation - earthquake events. The control and communication constraints in terms of delay and channel reliability are analyzed and incorporated into the regulator model, which incorporates both estimator and feedback command. The short packet formulation provides the ability to link latency and channel reliability, i.e. error rates. This error-delay coupling allows us to analyze the performance of the control system for several scenarios and channel variation models. The simulations show that measurement error harmfully impacts the system performances more than delayed measurements. On the other hand, it is demonstrated that delayed control commands have more impact on the structural response than lost command packets.