A feature article describing the fundamental characteristics and emerging applications of micro technology in the field of synthetic chemistry.

The expanding integration of control and communication networks in recent years has generated an increasing interest in control problems with feedback over a communication channel. Significant research activity has concentrated on stabilisation in face of channel effects such as quantisation and data-rate limits. In a recent paper, the authors have studied the problem of feedback stabilisation over a communication channel with a constraint on the admissible signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It has been shown therein that for a delay-free, linear time-invariant feedback loop, a SNR constraint in the feedback channel imposes fundamental limitations in the ability to achieve closed-loop stability. The present paper extends these results by introducing a time-delay in the loop, and shows that the lowest SNR required for closed-loop stability increases by a factor that may grow exponentially with the time-delay and the unstable open loop poles of the system. This result contributes to the quantification of performance tradeoffs in integrated control and communication environments.

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