A control system for a percussive drilling apparatus, the control system including a control unit for controlling machine control level operations of the percussive drilling apparatus, one or more machine control nodes connected to the control unit via a control bus, the machine control nodes providing at least one output from one or more sensors of the percussive drilling apparatus, and a measurement-while-drilling analysis functionality arranged to operate at the machine control level. The measurement-while-drilling analysis functionality being arranged to obtain measurement data of the one or more sensors from the one or more machine control nodes via the control bus and to carry out a measurement-while-drilling analysis of a drilling process.