Full characterization of act-and-wait control for first order unstable lag processes

Abstract

Abstract: Act-and-wait control is a special case of time-periodic control for systems with feedback delay, where the control gains are periodically switched on and off in order to stabilize otherwise unstable systems. The stability of feedback systems in the presence of time delay is a challenging problem. In this paper, we show that the act-and-wait type time-periodic control can always provide deadbeat control for first-order unstable lag processes with any (large but) fixed value of the time delay in the feedback loop. A full characterization of this act-and-wait controller with respect to the system and control parameters is given based on performance and robustness against disturbances