Asymmetric order-doubling and robust state estimation for uncertain nonminimum phase systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-148).by Muralidhar Ravuri.Ph.D

Parameter-Dependent Lyapunov Functions for Linear Systems With Constant Uncertainties

Robust stability of linear time-invariant systems with respect to structured uncertainties is considered. The small gain condition is sufficient to prove robust stability and scalings are typically used to reduce the conservatism of this condition. It is known that if the small gain condition is satisfied with constant scalings then there is a single quadratic Lyapunov function which proves robust stability with respect to all allowable time-varying perturbations. In this technical note we show that if the small gain condition is satisfied with frequency-varying scalings then an explicit parameter dependent Lyapunov function can be constructed to prove robust stability with respect to constant uncertainties. This Lyapunov function has a rational quadratic dependence on the uncertainties

Stochastic nonlinear control: A unified framework for stability, dissipativity, and optimality

In this work, we develop connections between stochastic stability theory and stochastic optimal control. In particular, first we develop Lyapunov and converse Lyapunov theorems for stochastic semistable nonlinear dynamical systems. Semistability is the property whereby the solutions of a stochastic dynamical system almost surely converge to (not necessarily isolated) Lyapunov stable in probability equilibrium points determined by the system initial conditions. Then we develop a unified framework to address the problem of optimal nonlinear analysis and feedback control for nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems. Specifically, we provide a simplified and tutorial framework for stochastic optimal control and focus on connections between stochastic Lyapunov theory and stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory. In particular, we show that asymptotic stability in probability of the closed-loop nonlinear system is guaranteed by means of a Lyapunov function which can clearly be seen to be the solution to the steady-state form of the stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, and hence, guaranteeing both stochastic stability and optimality. Moreover, extensions to stochastic finite-time and partial-state stability and optimal stabilization are also addressed. Finally, we extended the notion of dissipativity theory for deterministic dynamical systems to controlled Markov diffusion processes and show the utility of the general concept of dissipation for stochastic systems.Ph.D

Optimization of Lyapunov invariants in analysis and implementation of safety-critical software systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-176).This dissertation contributes to two major research areas in safety-critical software systems, namely, software analysis, and software implementation. In reference to the software analysis problem, the main contribution of the dissertation is the development of a novel framework, based on Lyapunov invariants and convex optimization, for verification of various safety and performance specifications for software systems. The enabling elements of the framework for software analysis are: (i) dynamical system interpretation and modeling of computer programs, (ii) Lyapunov invariants as behavior certificates for computer programs, and (iii) a computational procedure for finding the Lyapunov invariants. (i) The view in this dissertation is that software defines a rule for iterative modification of the operating memory at discrete instances of time. Hence, it can be modeled as a discrete-time dynamical system with the program variables as the state variables, and the operating memory as the state space. Three specific modeling languages are introduced which can represent a broad range of computer programs of interest to the control community. These are: Mixed Integer-Linear Models, Graph Models, and Linear Models with Conditional Switching. (ii) Inspired by the concept of Lyapunov functions in stability analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems, Lyapunov invariants are introduced and proposed for analysis of behavioral properties, and verification of various safety and performance specifications for computer programs. In the same spirit as standard Lyapunov functions, a Lyapunov invariant is an appropriately defined function of the state which satisfies a difference inequality along the trajectories. It is shown that variations of Lyapunov invariants satisfying certain technical conditions can be formulated for verification of several common specifications.(cont.) These include but are not limited to: absence of overflow, absence of division-by-zero, termination in finite time, and certain user-specified program assertions. (iii) A computational procedure based on convex relaxation techniques and numerical optimization is proposed for finding the Lyapunov invariants that prove the specifications. The framework is complemented by the introduction of a notion of optimality for the graph models. This notion can be used for constructing efficient graph models that improve the analysis in a systematic way. It is observed that the application of the framework to (graph models of) programs that are semantically identical but syntactically different does not produce identical results. This suggests that the success or failure of the method is contingent on the choice of the graph model. Based on this observation, the concepts of graph reduction, irreducible graphs, and minimal and maximal realizations of graph models are introduced. Several new theorems that compare the performance of the original graph model of a computer program and its reduced offsprings are presented. In reference to the software implementation problem for safety-critical systems, the main contribution of the dissertation is the introduction of an algorithm, based on optimization of quadratic Lyapunov functions and semidefinite programming, for computing optimal state space implementations for digital filters. The particular implementation that is considered is a finite word-length implementation on a fixed-point processor with quantization before or after multiplication. The objective is to minimize the effects of finite word-length constraints on performance deviation while respecting the overflow limits. The problem is first formulated as a special case of controller synthesis where the controller has a specific structure, which is known to be a hard non-convex problem in general.(cont.) It is then shown that this special case can be convexified exactly and the optimal implementation can be computed by solving a semidefinite optimization problem. It is observed that the optimal state space implementation of a digital filter on a machine with finite memory, does not necessarily define the same transfer function as that of an ideal implementation.by Mardavij Roozbehani.Ph.D

Fixed-structure Control of LTI Systems with Polytopic-type Uncertainty:Application to Inverter-interfaced Microgrids

This thesis focuses on the development of robust control solutions for linear time-invariant interconnected systems affected by polytopic-type uncertainty. The main issues involved in the control of such systems, e.g. sensor and actuator placement, control configuration selection, and robust fixed-structure control design are included. The problem of fixed-structure control is intrinsically nonconvex and hence computationally intractable. Nevertheless, the problem has attracted considerable attention due to the great importance of fixed-structure controllers in practice. In this thesis, necessary and sufficient conditions for fixed-structure H_inf control of polytopic systems with a single uncertain parameter in terms of a finite number of bilinear matrix inequalities (BMIs) are developed. Increasing the number of uncertain parameters leads to sufficient BMI conditions, where the number of decision variables grows polynomially. Convex approximations of robust fixed-order and fixed-structure controller design which rely on the concept of strictly positive realness (SPRness) of transfer functions in state space setting are presented. Such approximations are based on the use of slack matrices whose duty is to decouple the product of unknown matrices. Several algorithms for determination and update of the slack matrices are given. It is shown that the problem of sensor and actuator placement in the polytopic interconnected systems can be formulated as an optimization problem by minimizing cardinality of some pattern matrices, while satisfying a guaranteed level of H_inf performance. The control configuration design is achieved by solving a convex optimization problem whose solution delivers a trade-off curve that starts with a centralized controller and ends with a decentralized or a distributed controller. The proposed approaches are applied to inverter-interfaced microgrids which consist of distributed generation (DG) units. To this end, two important control problems associated with the microgrids are considered: (i) Current control of grid-connected voltage-source converters with L/LCL filters and (ii) Voltage control of islanded microgrids. The proposed control strategies are able to independently regulate the direct and quadrature (dq) components of the converter currents and voltages at the point of common couplings (PCC) in a fully decoupled manner and provide satisfactory dynamic responses. The important problem of plug-and-play (PnP) capability of DGs in the microgrids is also studied. It is shown that an inverter-interfaced microgrid consisting of multi DGs under PnP functionality can be cast as a system with polytopic-type uncertainty. By virtue of this novel description and use of the results from theory of robust control, the stability of the microgrid system under PnP operation of DGs is preserved. Extensive case studies, based on time-domain simulations in MATLAB/SimPowerSystems Toolbox, are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed controllers under various test scenarios, e.g., load change, voltage and current tracking. Real-time hardware-in-the-loop case studies, using RT-LAB real-time platform of OPAL-RT Technologies, are also conducted to validate the performance of the designed controllers and demonstrate their insensitivity to hardware implementation issues, e.g., noise and PWM non-idealities. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate satisfactory performance of the designed controllers

Stabilization of cascaded nonlinear systems under sampling and delays

Over the last decades, the methodologies of dynamical systems and control theory have been playing an increasingly relevant role in a lot of situations of practical interest. Though, a lot of theoretical problem still remain unsolved. Among all, the ones concerning stability and stabilization are of paramount importance. In order to stabilize a physical (or not) system, it is necessary to acquire and interpret heterogeneous information on its behavior in order to correctly intervene on it. In general, those information are not available through a continuous flow but are provided in a synchronous or asynchronous way. This issue has to be unavoidably taken into account for the design of the control action. In a very natural way, all those heterogeneities define an hybrid system characterized by both continuous and discrete dynamics. This thesis is contextualized in this framework and aimed at proposing new methodologies for the stabilization of sampled-data nonlinear systems with focus toward the stabilization of cascade dynamics. In doing so, we shall propose a small number of tools for constructing sampled-data feedback laws stabilizing the origin of sampled-data nonlinear systems admitting cascade interconnection representations. To this end, we shall investigate on the effect of sampling on the properties of the continuous-time system while enhancing design procedures requiring no extra assumptions over the sampled-data equivalent model. Finally, we shall show the way sampling positively affects nonlinear retarded dynamics affected by a fixed and known time-delay over the input signal by enforcing on the implicit cascade representation the sampling process induces onto the retarded system