Wireless Sensor Networks and Control Systems are
an essential part of the Smart Grid. We consider the problem of
performing control over large complex networked systems with
packet drops. More specifically, we are interested in improving
the performance of the regulation of control loops when the communication
is made over low-cost wireless networks. In control
over wireless networks it is common to use Contention-Free (CF)
schemes where no losses occur with the price of low scalability
and complicated scheduling policies. In this work we propose a
hybrid MAC and control architecture, where a small number
of control loops with high demand of attention are scheduled
in a CF scheme and well regulated loops are scheduled in a
lossy, asynchronous and highly scalable, Contention-Access (CA)
scheme. We model and analyze the performance of such system
with Markov Jump Linear System (MJLS) tools and compare it
with other architecture types. Performance is evaluated using a
quadratic cost function of the state.