A highly specialized overview of an area of industrial control, Multilayer control of networked cyber-physical systems (NCPSs) offers a detailed account of the concept, the theory, and some applications of NCPSs.

The book is divided into five chapters.

Chapter 1 explains at large the problem that NCPSs solve and why they are necessary, along with a detailed outline of the underlying algorithms and the general architecture of these systems, consisting of network and application layers.

Chapter 2 is concerned with theoretical aspects of the application of consensus-based algorithms at the network layer of the systems. It describes several computational models for representing the network (network models and overlay virtual graph), and consequently discusses the effects of cooperation between them in terms of stability and convergence. It shows theorems and calculations proving these effects. The end of the chapter is dedicated to some performance issues touching upon link utilization, set point regulation, and fairness of the proposed controller.

Chapter 3 turns to the application layer and takes the same methodological standpoint of studying and presenting it as the one adopted in the previous chapter, dealing with the network layer. Thus, it describes the system model for networked monitoring and control in a very detailed manner, and then it turns to explaining the stability and convergence results with theorems and calculations, as was done in chapter 2. In addition to tackling performance issues, chapter 3 also presents implementation details and algorithms related to multilayer control system design.

Chapters 4 and 5 discuss examples of the application of control systems for networked queue systems and for cyber-physical systems. The two chapters describe the application area at stake and the experiments carried out together with the results and the implementation of the solution with the algorithms employed. The two application cases are also presented with schemata that show the structure of the networks and the network components as well as the pathways of application of the control systems.

A very well-structured, highly technical account with a lot of technical details and thorough explanations of both the problems and the solutions with their motivation, this book is an excellent read for engineers interested in complex networks, networked systems, and their creation, management, and control.