NONLINEAR IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL: A PRACTICAL SOLUTION AND ITS APPLICATION

It is well known that typical welding processes such as laser welding are nonlinear although mostly they are treated as linear system. For the purpose of automatic control, Identification of nonlinear system, especially welding processes is a necessary and fundamental problem. The purpose of this research is to develop a simple and practical identification and control for welding processes. Many investigations have shown the possibility to represent physical processes by nonlinear models, such as Hammerstein structure, consisting of a nonlinearity and linear dynamics in series with each other. Motivated by the fact that typical welding processes do not have non-zeroes, a novel two-step nonlinear Hammerstein identification method is proposed for laser welding processes. The method can be realized both in continuous and discrete case. To study the relation among parameters influencing laser processing, a standard diode laser processing system is built as system prototype. Based on experimental study, a SISO and 2ISO nonlinear Hammerstein model structure are developed to approximate the diode laser welding process. Specific persistent excitation signals such as PRTS (Pseudo-random-ternary-series) to Step signal are used for identification. The model takes welding speed as input and the top surface molten weld pool width as output. A vision based sensor implemented with a Pulse-controlled-CCD camera is proposed and applied to acquire the images and the geometric data of the weld pool. The estimated model is then verified by comparing the simulation and experimental measurement. The verification shows that the model is reasonably correct and can be use to model the nonlinear process for further study. The two-step nonlinear identification method is proved valid and applicable to traditional welding processes and similar manufacturing processes. Based on the identified model, nonlinear control algorithms are also studied. Algorithms include simple linearization and backstepping based robust adaptive control algorithm are proposed and simulated

Dirty RF Signal Processing for Mitigation of Receiver Front-end Non-linearity

Moderne drahtlose Kommunikationssysteme stellen hohe und teilweise gegensätzliche Anforderungen an die Hardware der Funkmodule, wie z.B. niedriger Energieverbrauch, große Bandbreite und hohe Linearität. Die Gewährleistung einer ausreichenden Linearität ist, neben anderen analogen Parametern, eine Herausforderung im praktischen Design der Funkmodule. Der Fokus der Dissertation liegt auf breitbandigen HF-Frontends für Software-konfigurierbare Funkmodule, die seit einigen Jahren kommerziell verfügbar sind. Die praktischen Herausforderungen und Grenzen solcher flexiblen Funkmodule offenbaren sich vor allem im realen Experiment. Eines der Hauptprobleme ist die Sicherstellung einer ausreichenden analogen Performanz über einen weiten Frequenzbereich. Aus einer Vielzahl an analogen Störeffekten behandelt die Arbeit die Analyse und Minderung von Nichtlinearitäten in Empfängern mit direkt-umsetzender Architektur. Im Vordergrund stehen dabei Signalverarbeitungsstrategien zur Minderung nichtlinear verursachter Interferenz - ein Algorithmus, der besser unter "Dirty RF"-Techniken bekannt ist. Ein digitales Verfahren nach der Vorwärtskopplung wird durch intensive Simulationen, Messungen und Implementierung in realer Hardware verifiziert. Um die Lücken zwischen Theorie und praktischer Anwendbarkeit zu schließen und das Verfahren in reale Funkmodule zu integrieren, werden verschiedene Untersuchungen durchgeführt. Hierzu wird ein erweitertes Verhaltensmodell entwickelt, das die Struktur direkt-umsetzender Empfänger am besten nachbildet und damit alle Verzerrungen im HF- und Basisband erfasst. Darüber hinaus wird die Leistungsfähigkeit des Algorithmus unter realen Funkkanal-Bedingungen untersucht. Zusätzlich folgt die Vorstellung einer ressourceneffizienten Echtzeit-Implementierung des Verfahrens auf einem FPGA. Abschließend diskutiert die Arbeit verschiedene Anwendungsfelder, darunter spektrales Sensing, robuster GSM-Empfang und GSM-basiertes Passivradar. Es wird gezeigt, dass nichtlineare Verzerrungen erfolgreich in der digitalen Domäne gemindert werden können, wodurch die Bitfehlerrate gestörter modulierter Signale sinkt und der Anteil nichtlinear verursachter Interferenz minimiert wird. Schließlich kann durch das Verfahren die effektive Linearität des HF-Frontends stark erhöht werden. Damit wird der zuverlässige Betrieb eines einfachen Funkmoduls unter dem Einfluss der Empfängernichtlinearität möglich. Aufgrund des flexiblen Designs ist der Algorithmus für breitbandige Empfänger universal einsetzbar und ist nicht auf Software-konfigurierbare Funkmodule beschränkt.Today's wireless communication systems place high requirements on the radio's hardware that are largely mutually exclusive, such as low power consumption, wide bandwidth, and high linearity. Achieving a sufficient linearity, among other analogue characteristics, is a challenging issue in practical transceiver design. The focus of this thesis is on wideband receiver RF front-ends for software defined radio technology, which became commercially available in the recent years. Practical challenges and limitations are being revealed in real-world experiments with these radios. One of the main problems is to ensure a sufficient RF performance of the front-end over a wide bandwidth. The thesis covers the analysis and mitigation of receiver non-linearity of typical direct-conversion receiver architectures, among other RF impairments. The main focus is on DSP-based algorithms for mitigating non-linearly induced interference, an approach also known as "Dirty RF" signal processing techniques. The conceived digital feedforward mitigation algorithm is verified through extensive simulations, RF measurements, and implementation in real hardware. Various studies are carried out that bridge the gap between theory and practical applicability of this approach, especially with the aim of integrating that technique into real devices. To this end, an advanced baseband behavioural model is developed that matches to direct-conversion receiver architectures as close as possible, and thus considers all generated distortions at RF and baseband. In addition, the algorithm's performance is verified under challenging fading conditions. Moreover, the thesis presents a resource-efficient real-time implementation of the proposed solution on an FPGA. Finally, different use cases are covered in the thesis that includes spectrum monitoring or sensing, GSM downlink reception, and GSM-based passive radar. It is shown that non-linear distortions can be successfully mitigated at system level in the digital domain, thereby decreasing the bit error rate of distorted modulated signals and reducing the amount of non-linearly induced interference. Finally, the effective linearity of the front-end is increased substantially. Thus, the proper operation of a low-cost radio under presence of receiver non-linearity is possible. Due to the flexible design, the algorithm is generally applicable for wideband receivers and is not restricted to software defined radios

The design of periodic excitations for dynamic system identification

System identification techniques are developed for modelling linear and nonlinear systems. The main results of the work are concerned with the design and utilisation of periodic perturbation signals in general areas of time- and frequency-domain system identification. A design strategy is given for a new class of perturbation signals, together with examples of their use in system identification applications. Signal processing procedures are developed for the practical treatment of drift disturbances and transient effects, and also for the detection of nonlinear contributions to the measurement data. The techniques rely completely on the periodicity of the excitation, and so the advantageous properties of periodic input signals are considered in detail. The use of periodic excitations in discrete- and continuous-time nonlinear system identification is also reported, with the identification methods illustrating the worth of frequency-domain measurements in this area. An automatic tuning procedure for PID controllers is also developed, which illustrates an application of system identification techniques to control problems

Process identification using second order Volterra models for nonlinear model predictive control design of flotation circuits

The control of flotation circuits is a complicated problem, since flotation circuits are nonlinear multivariable processes with a significant degree of interaction between the variables. Isolated PID controllers usually do not perform adequately. The application of a nonlinear model predictive algorithm based on second order Volterra models was investigated. Volterra series models are a higher order extension of linear impulse response models. The nonlinear model predictive control algorithm can also be seen as a linear model predictive controller with higher order correction terms. A dynamic model of a flotation circuit based on the governing continuity equations was developed. The responses obtained represented the qualitative relationships between the model inputs and the controlled variables. This model exhibited strong nonlinearities, including asymmetrical responses to symmetrical inputs and gain sign changes. This dynamic model was treated as the plant to be identified and from which second order Volterra models were obtained. Full Volterra models required excessively large data sets, but significant reductions in the size of the required data set could be achieved if some of the second order coefficients were constrained to zero. These "pruned" Volterra models represented the plant dynamics significantly better than linear models. In particular, these second order Volterra models were able to model asymmetrical responses including gain sign changes. A special case of "pruned" second order Volterra models are diagonal second order models, where all the off-diagonal coefficients (hij where i ≠ j) are constrained to zero. These models required less data than pruned Volterra models containing off-diagonal coefficients, but were less accurate. The performance of nonlinear model predictive controllers based on a pruned second order and diagonal second order Volterra models was evaluated. The performance of these controllers was also compared to the performance obtained with a first order (linear) Volterra model. All three controllers gave equivalent results for large manipulated variable weights. However, when the controllers were tuned more aggressively, results obtained from the three controllers differed considerably. The pruned nonlinear controller performed well even when tuned aggressively while the performance of the linear controller deteriorated. For the case of disturbance rejection, the linear controller performed slightly better than the nonlinear controllers.Dissertation (MEng (Control Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2006.Chemical Engineeringunrestricte