Robust control with structured perturbations

Two important problems in the area of control systems design and analysis are discussed. The first is the robust stability using characteristic polynomial, which is treated first in characteristic polynomial coefficient space with respect to perturbations in the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial, and then for a control system containing perturbed parameters in the transfer function description of the plant. In coefficient space, a simple expression is first given for the l(sup 2) stability margin for both monic and non-monic cases. Following this, a method is extended to reveal much larger stability region. This result has been extended to the parameter space so that one can determine the stability margin, in terms of ranges of parameter variations, of the closed loop system when the nominal stabilizing controller is given. The stability margin can be enlarged by a choice of better stabilizing controller. The second problem describes the lower order stabilization problem, the motivation of the problem is as follows. Even though the wide range of stabilizing controller design methodologies is available in both the state space and transfer function domains, all of these methods produce unnecessarily high order controllers. In practice, the stabilization is only one of many requirements to be satisfied. Therefore, if the order of a stabilizing controller is excessively high, one can normally expect to have a even higher order controller on the completion of design such as inclusion of dynamic response requirements, etc. Therefore, it is reasonable to have a lowest possible order stabilizing controller first and then adjust the controller to meet additional requirements. The algorithm for designing a lower order stabilizing controller is given. The algorithm does not necessarily produce the minimum order controller; however, the algorithm is theoretically logical and some simulation results show that the algorithm works in general