A Method for the Design of Multirate Sampled-Data Digital Flight Control Systems of Piloted Aircraft

The initial flight-test operations of piloted aircraft, in which Digital Flight Control (DFC) systems were first employed, exposed handling qualities problems that were not predicted during the design stage. Subsequent studies attributed the cause of these problems to the techniques used in the design of the digital control systems. The particular feature which unites the reported difficulties is that, an infinite-resolution sampled-data model is assumed for the design process but the practical DFC implementation is realised as an amplitude-quantised sampled-data system

Finite worldlength effects in fixed-point implementations of linear systems

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-194).by Vinay Mohta.M.Eng

Networked and event-triggered control systems

In this thesis, control algorithms are studied that are tailored for platforms with limited computation and communication resources. The interest in such control algorithms is motivated by the fact that nowadays control algorithms are implemented on small and inexpensive embedded microprocessors and that the sensors, actuators and controllers are connected through multipurpose communication networks. To handle the fact that computation power is no longer abundant and that communication networks do not have in finite bandwidth, the control algorithms need to be either robust for the deficiencies induced by these constraints, or they need to optimally utilise the available computation and communication resources. In this thesis, methodologies for the design and analysis of control algorithms with such properties are developed. Networked Control Systems: In the first part of the thesis, so-called networked control systems (NCSs) are studied. The control algorithms studied in this part of the thesis can be seen as conventional sampled-data controllers that need to be robust against the artefacts introduced by using a finite bandwidth communication channel. The network-induced phenomena that are considered in this thesis are time-varying transmission intervals, time-varying delays, packet dropouts and communication constraints. The latter phenomenon causes that not all sensor and actuator data can be transmitted simultaneously and, therefore, a scheduling protocol is needed to orchestrate when to transmit what data over the network. To analyse the stability of the NCSs, a discrete-time modelling framework is presented and, in particular, two cases are considered: in the first case, the transmission intervals and delays are assumed to be upper and lower bounded, and in the second case, they are described by a random process, satisfying a continuous joint probability distribution. Both cases are relevant. The former case requires a less detailed description of the network behaviour than the latter case, while the latter results in a less conservative stability analysis than the former. This allows to make a tradeoff between modelling accuracy (of network-induced effects) and conservatism in the stability analysis. In both cases, linear plants and controllers are considered and the NCS is modelled as a discrete-time switched linear parameter-varying system. To assess the stability of this system, novel polytopic overapproximations are developed, which allows the stability of the NCS to be studied using a finite number of linear matrix inequalities. It will be shown that this approach reduces conservatism significantly with respect to existing results in the literature and allows for studying larger classes of controllers, including discrete-time dynamical output-based controllers. Hence, the main contribution of this part of the thesis is the development of a new and general framework to analyse the stability of NCSs subject to four network-induced phenomena in a hardly conservative manner. Event-Triggered Control Systems: In the second part of the thesis, socalled event-triggered control (ETC) systems are studied. ETC is a control strategy in which the control task is executed after the occurrence of an external event, rather than the elapse of a certain period of time as in conventional periodic control. In this way, ETC can be designed to only provide control updates when needed and, thereby, to optimally utilise the available computation and communication resources. This part of the thesis consists of three main contributions in this appealing area of research. The first contribution is the extension of the existing results on ETC towards dynamical output-based feedback controllers, instead of state-feedback control, as is common in the majority of the literature on ETC. Furthermore, extensions towards decentralised event triggering are presented. These extensions are important for practical implementations of ETC, as in many control applications the full state is hardly ever available for feedback, and sensors and actuators are often physically distributed, which prohibits the use of centralised event-triggering conditions. To study the stability and the L1-performance of this ETC system, a modelling framework based on impulsive systems is developed. Furthermore, for the novel output-based decentralised event-triggering conditions that are proposed, it is shown how nonzero lower bounds on the minimum inter-event times can be guaranteed and how they can be computed. The second contribution is the proposition of the new class of periodic event-triggered control (PETC) algorithms, where the objective is to combine the benefits that, on the one hand, periodic control and, on the other hand, ETC offer. In PETC, the event-triggering condition is monitored periodically and at each sampling instant it is decided whether or not to transmit the data and to use computation resources for the control task. Such an event-triggering condition has several benefits, including the inherent existence of a minimum inter-event time, which can be tuned directly. Furthermore, the fact that the event-triggering condition is only verified at the periodic sampling times, instead of continuously, makes it possible to implement this strategy in standard time-sliced embedded software architectures. To analyse the stability and the L2-performance for these PETC systems, methodologies based on piecewiselinear systems models and impulsive system models will be provided, leading to an effective analysis framework for PETC. Finally, a novel approach to solving the codesign problem of both the feedback control algorithm and the event-triggering condition is presented. In particular, a novel way to solve the minimum attention and anytime attention control problems is proposed. In minimum attention control, the `attention' that a control task requires is minimised, and in anytime attention control, the performance under the `attention' given by a scheduler is maximised. In this context, `attention' is interpreted as the inverse of the time elapsed between two consecutive executions of a control task. The two control problems are solved by formulating them as linear programs, which can be solved efficiently in an online fashion. This offers a new and elegant way to solve both the minimum attention control problem and the anytime attention control problem in one unifying framework. The contributions presented in this thesis can form a basis for future research explorations that can eventually lead to a mature system theory for both NCSs and ETC systems, which are indispensable for the deployment of NCSs and ETC systems in a large variety of practical control applications

The implementation of a generalised robust adaptive controller

An adaptive controller is developed, comprising a robust parameter estimator and an explicit pole assignment controller design. The controller is reformulated to have a standard PID structure. A practical implementation is facilitated on a digital microcomputer, connected to a physical process. Test results are presented for this real process subject to variable dead-time and an external disturbance. Simulation results are also presented, for a nominally non minimum-phase process subject to variable dead-time and large open-loop gain changes. Robust performance is demonstrated under all of these circumstances. Recommendations are given for the choices and considerations required in a robust practical implementation. Much research has been done in the field of adaptive control over the past few decades. However, a let needs to be learned about the robustness of adaptive control algorithms. This research investigates the implementation of a practical adaptive control algorithm, with numerous features incorporated to improve the robust performance of such a controller. Parameter estimation is performed using Recursive Least Squares (RLS), with various signal conditioning filters to reduce estimator sensitivity to noise and modelling errors. The control design is based on closed-loop pole assignment, with adaptive feed forward compensation included. Further, provision is made in both the estimation model and the feedback control structure to eliminate deterministic immeasurable disturbances, and to track deterministic set point variations. This is based on the Internal Model Principle. Measured random disturbance signals are included in the estimation model, for which "transfer function" polynomial coefficients are estimated and then used in the feed forward control d e sign. A new shift- operator, namely the 6-operator, is used in all controller and estimator formulations. This has been shown to have better numerical properties and to correspond more closely to continuous-time control, than the traditional q operator of z-domain discrete control. A practical implementation on a digital computer is investigated, applied to a real plant typical of an industrial application. Simulation results are also obtained for plant with non minimum-phase zeros and variable dead-time

Self-Evaluation Applied Mathematics 2003-2008 University of Twente

This report contains the self-study for the research assessment of the Department of Applied Mathematics (AM) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at the University of Twente (UT). The report provides the information for the Research Assessment Committee for Applied Mathematics, dealing with mathematical sciences at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. It describes the state of affairs pertaining to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008