Time Complexity of Decentralized Fixed-Mode Verification

Given an interconnected system, this note is concerned with the time complexity of verifying whether an unrepeated mode of the system is a decentralized fixed mode (DFM). It is shown that checking the decentralized fixedness of any distinct mode is tantamount to testing the strong connectivity of a digraph formed based on the system. It is subsequently proved that the time complexity of this decision problem using the proposed approach is the same as the complexity of matrix multiplication. This work concludes that the identification of distinct DFMs (by means of a deterministic algorithm, rather than a randomized one) is computationally very easy, although the existing algorithms for solving this problem would wrongly imply that it is cumbersome. This note provides not only a complexity analysis, but also an efficient algorithm for tackling the underlying problem

Delay-Based Controller Design for Continuous-Time and Hybrid Applications

Motivated by the availability of different types of delays in embedded systems and biological circuits, the objective of this work is to study the benefits that delay can provide in simplifying the implementation of controllers for continuous-time systems. Given a continuous-time linear time-invariant (LTI) controller, we propose three methods to approximate this controller arbitrarily precisely by a simple controller composed of delay blocks, a few integrators and possibly a unity feedback. Different problems associated with the approximation procedures, such as finding the optimal number of delay blocks or studying the robustness of the designed controller with respect to delay values, are then investigated. We also study the design of an LTI continuous-time controller satisfying given control objectives whose delay-based implementation needs the least number of delay blocks. A direct application of this work is in the sampled-data control of a real-time embedded system, where the sampling frequency is relatively high and/or the output of the system is sampled irregularly. Based on our results on delay-based controller design, we propose a digital-control scheme that can implement every continuous-time stabilizing (LTI) controller. Unlike a typical sampled-data controller, the hybrid controller introduced here -— consisting of an ideal sampler, a digital controller, a number of modified second-order holds and possibly a unity feedback -— is robust to sampling jitter and can operate at arbitrarily high sampling frequencies without requiring expensive, high-precision computation

Rational Optimization using Sum-of-Squares Techniques

Motivated by many control applications, this paper deals with the global solutions of unconstrained optimization problems. First, a simple SOS method is presented to find the infimum of a polynomial, which can be handled efficiently using the relevant software tools. The main idea of this method is to introduce a perturbation variable whose approaching to zero results in a solution with any arbitrary precision. The proposed technique is then extended to the case of rational functions. The primary advantages of this approach over the existing ones are its simplicity and capability of treating problems for which the existing methods are not efficient, as demonstrated in three numerical examples

Pole Assignment With Improved Control Performance by Means of Periodic Feedback

This technical note is concerned with the pole placement of continuous-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems by means of LQ suboptimal periodic feedback. It is well-known that there exist infinitely many generalized sampled-data hold functions (GSHF) for any controllable LTI system to place the modes of its discrete-time equivalent model at prescribed locations. Among all such GSHFs, this technical note aims to find the one which also minimizes a given LQ performance index. To this end, the GSHF being sought is written as the sum of a particular GSHF and a homogeneous one. The particular GSHF can be readily obtained using the conventional pole-placement techniques. The homogeneous GSHF, on the other hand, is expressed as a linear combination of a finite number of functions such as polynomials, sinusoidals, etc. The problem of finding the optimal coefficients of this linear combination is then formulated as a linear matrix inequality (LMI) optimization. The procedure is illustrated by a numerical example

Complexity of checking the existence of a stabilizing decentralized controller

Given an interconnected system, this paper is concerned with the time complexity of verifying if any given unrepeated mode of the system is a decentralized fixed mode (DFM). It is shown that checking the decentralized fixedness of any distinct mode is tantamount to testing the strong connectivity of a digraph formed based on the system. It is subsequently proved that the time complexity of this decision problem using the proposed approach is the same as the complexity of matrix multiplication. This work concludes that the identification of distinct decentralized fixed modes (by means of a deterministic algorithm, rather than a randomized one) is computationally very easy, although the existing algorithms for solving this problem would wrongly imply that it is cumbersome. This paper provides not only a complexity analysis, but also an efficient algorithm for tackling the underlying problem