Decentralized pole assignment for interconnected systems

Given a general proper interconnected system, this paper aims to design a LTI decentralized controller to place the modes of the closed-loop system at pre-determined locations. To this end, it is first assumed that the structural graph of the system is strongly connected. Then, it is shown applying generic static local controllers to any number of subsystems will not introduce new decentralized fixed modes (DFM) in the resultant system, although it has fewer inputoutput stations compared to the original system. This means that if there are some subsystems whose control costs are highly dependent on the complexity of the control law, then generic static controllers can be applied to such subsystems, without changing the characteristics of the system in terms of the fixed modes. As a direct application of this result, in the case when the system has no DFMs, one can apply generic static controllers to all but one subsystem, and the resultant system will be controllable and observable through that subsystem. Now, a simple observer-based local controller corresponding to this subsystem can be designed to displace the modes of the entire system arbitrarily. Similar results can also be attained for a system whose structural graph is not strongly connected. It is worth mentioning that similar concepts are deployed in the literature for the special case of strictly proper systems, but as noted in the relevant papers, extension of the results to general proper systems is not trivial. This demonstrates the significance of the present work

Static Output Feedback: On Essential Feasible Information Patterns

In this paper, for linear time-invariant plants, where a collection of possible inputs and outputs are known a priori, we address the problem of determining the communication between outputs and inputs, i.e., information patterns, such that desired control objectives of the closed-loop system (for instance, stabilizability) through static output feedback may be ensured. We address this problem in the structural system theoretic context. To this end, given a specified structural pattern (locations of zeros/non-zeros) of the plant matrices, we introduce the concept of essential information patterns, i.e., communication patterns between outputs and inputs that satisfy the following conditions: (i) ensure arbitrary spectrum assignment of the closed-loop system, using static output feedback constrained to the information pattern, for almost all possible plant instances with the specified structural pattern; and (ii) any communication failure precludes the resulting information pattern from attaining the pole placement objective in (i). Subsequently, we study the problem of determining essential information patterns. First, we provide several necessary and sufficient conditions to verify whether a specified information pattern is essential or not. Further, we show that such conditions can be verified by resorting to algorithms with polynomial complexity (in the dimensions of the state, input and output). Although such verification can be performed efficiently, it is shown that the problem of determining essential information patterns is in general NP-hard. The main results of the paper are illustrated through examples

Selection of Decentralised Control Structures: Structural Methodologies and Diagnostics

The paper aims at formulating an integrated approach for the selection of decentralized control structures using a number of structural criteria aiming at facilitating the design of decentralised control schemes. This requires the selection of decentralisation structure that will allow the generic solvability of a variety of decentralised control problems, such as pole assignment by decentralised output feedback. The approach is based on the use of necessary and sufficient conditions for generic solvability and exact solvability of decentralised control problems. The generic solvability conditions lead to characterisations of inputs and outputs channel partitions. The exact solvability conditions use criteria on avoiding the presence of fixed modes, as well as necessary conditions for pole assignment, expressed in terms of properties of Plϋcker invariants and Markov type matrices. The structural approach provides a classification of desirable input and output partitions based on structural criteria and it is embedded in an overall framework that may involve aspects related to large scale design