Analysis and design of discrete-time linear systems with nested actuator saturations

This paper is concerned with the analysis and design of discrete-time linear systems subject to nested saturation functions. By utilizing a new compact convex hull representation of the saturation nonlinearity, a linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) based condition is obtained for testing the local and global stability of the considered nonlinear system. The estimation of the domain of attraction and the design of feedback gains such that the estimation of the domain of attraction for the resulting closed-loop system is maximized are then converted into some LMIs based optimization problems. Compared with the existing results on the same problems, the proposed solutions are less conservative as more slack variables are introduced into the conditions. A couple of numerical examples are worked out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Control of discrete‐time periodic linear systems with input saturation via multi‐step periodic invariant sets

This paper studies local control of discrete‐time periodic linear systems subject to input saturation by using the multi‐step periodic invariant set approach. A multi‐step periodic invariant set refers to a set from which all trajectories will enter a periodic invariant set after finite steps, remain there forever, and eventually converge to the origin as time approaches infinity. The problems of (robust) estimation of the domain of attraction, (robust) local stabilization (with bounded uncertainties), and disturbance rejection are considered. Compared with the conventional periodic invariant set approach, which has been used in the literature for local stability analysis and stabilization of discrete‐time periodic linear systems subject to input saturation, this new invariant set approach is capable of significantly reducing the conservatism by introducing additional auxiliary variables in the set invariance conditions. Moreover, the new approach allows to design (robust) stabilizing periodic controller, in the presence of norm bounded uncertainties, whose period is the same as the open‐loop system and is different from the existing periodic enhancement approach by which the period of the controller is multiple times of the period of the open‐loop system. Several numerical examples are worked out to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-triggered Consensus Control for Linear Multi-agent Systems With Input Saturation

In this paper, we study the consensus problem for a class of linear multi-agent systems (MASs) with consideration of input saturation under the self-triggered mechanism. In the context of discrete-time systems, a self-triggered strategy is developed to determine the time interval between the adjacent triggers. The triggering condition is designed by using the current sampled consensus error. Furthermore, the consensus control protocol is designed by means of a state feedback approach. It is shown that the considered multi-agent systems can reach consensus with the presented algorithm. Some sufficient conditions are proposed in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) to show the positively invariant property of the domain of attraction (DOA). Moreover, some sufficient conditions of controller synthesis are provided to enlarge the volume of the DOA and obtain the control gain matrix. A numerical example is simulated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis results.      

Analysis and design for discrete-time linear systems subject to actuator saturation

We present a method to estimate the domain of attraction for a discrete-time linear system under a saturated linear feedback. A simple condition is derived in terms of an auxiliary feedback matrix for determining if a given ellipsoid is contractively invariant. Moreover, the condition can be expressed as linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) in terms of all the varying parameters and hence can easily be used for controller synthesis. The following surprising result is revealed for systems with single input: suppose that an ellipsoid is made invariant with a linear feedback, then it is invariant under the saturated linear feedback if and only if there exists a saturated (nonlinear) feedback which makes the ellipsoid invariant. Finally, the set invariance condition is extended to determine invariant sets for systems with persistent disturbances. LMI based methods are developed for constructing feedback laws that achieve disturbance rejection with guaranteed stability requirements.     

Anti-windup design with guaranteed regions of stability for discrete-time linear systems

The purpose of this paper is to study the determination of stability regions for discrete-time linear systems with saturating controls through anti-windup schemes. Considering that a linear dynamic output feedback has been designed to stabilize the linear discrete-time system (without saturation), a method is proposed for designing an anti-windup gain that maximizes an estimate of the basin of attraction of the closed-loop system in the presence of saturation. It is shown that the closed-loop system obtained from the controller plus the anti-windup gain can be locally modeled by a linear system with a deadzone nonlinearity. Then, based on the use of a new sector condition and quadratic Lyapunov functions, stability conditions in an LMI form are stated. These conditions are then considered in a convex optimization problem in order to compute an anti-windup gain that maximizes an estimate of the basin of attraction of the closed-loop system. Moreover, considering asymptotically stable open-loop systems, it is shown that the conditions can be slightly modified in order to determine an anti-windup gain that ensures global stability. An extension of the proposed results to the case of dynamic anti-windup synthesis is also presented in the paper.     

Controller design for Markov jumping systems subject to actuator saturation

In this paper, the stochastic stabilization problem for a class of Markov jumping linear systems (MJLS) subject to actuator saturation is considered. The concept of domain of attraction in mean square sense is used to analyze the closed-loop stability. When the jumping mode is available, a mode-dependent state feedback controller is developed. Otherwise, we give a less conservative approach to design the mode-independent state feedback controller. Both design procedures can be converted into a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, a numerical example is provided to show the effectiveness of the techniques.     

On stability and stabilization of periodic discrete-time systems with an application to satellite attitude control

An alternative stability analysis theorem for nonlinear periodic discrete-time systems is presented. The developed theorem offers a trade-off between conservatism and complexity of the corresponding stability test. In addition, it yields a tractable stabilizing controller synthesis method for linear periodic discrete-time systems subject to polytopic state and input constraints. It is proven that in this setting, the proposed synthesis method is strictly less conservative than available tractable synthesis methods. The application of the derived method to the satellite attitude control problem results in a large region of attraction.     

An analysis and design method for discrete-time linear systems under nested saturation

This paper considers a discrete-time linear system under nested saturation. Nested saturation arises, for example, in systems with actuators subject to both magnitude and rate saturation. A condition is derived in terms of a set of auxiliary feedback gains for determining if a given ellipsoid is contractively invariant. Moreover, this condition is shown to be equivalent to linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) in the actual and auxiliary feedback gains. As a result, the estimation of the domain of attraction for a given set of feedback gains is then formulated as an optimization problem with LMI constraints. By viewing the feedback gains as extra free parameters, the optimization problem can be used for controller design.     

Robust Stability and Stabilization of Positive Interval Systems Subject to Actuator Saturation

This paper addresses the stabilization problem for a class of uncertain positive linear systems (PLSs) in the presence of saturating actuators. The objective is to obtain sufficient conditions for the robust stability of PLSs and to design robust state feedback control laws such that the closed‐loop uncertain system is asymptotically stable and positive at the origin with a large domain of attraction. Several sufficient conditions for robust stabilization and positivity are derived via the Lyapunov function approach and convex analysis method for both the discrete‐time and the continuous‐time cases, respectively. The state feedback controller design and the estimation of the domain of attraction are presented by solving a convex optimization problem with linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) constraints. A numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Control of periodic sampling systems subject to actuator saturation

In this paper, the control problem of linear systems with periodic sampling period subject to actuator saturation is considered via delta operator approach. Using periodic Lyapunov function, sufficient conditions of local stabilization for periodic sampling systems are given. By solving an optimization problem, we derive the periodic feedback control laws and the estimate of the domain of attraction. As the saturation function sat(·) belongs to the sector [0,1], sufficient conditions are derived by constructing saturation‐dependent Lyapunov functions to ensure that the periodic sampling system is globally asymptotically stable. A numerical example is given to illustrate the theoretical results proposed in this paper. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On estimation of attraction domain for port-controlled Hamiltonian systems subject to actuator saturation

This paper investigates the estimation of domain of attraction for nonlinear port-controlled Hamiltonian (PCH) systems with actuator saturation (AS).Several conditions are established under which an el...     

Robust stabilization of switched discrete-time systems with actuator saturation

This paper studies the robust stabilization problem of switched discrete-time linear systems subject to actuator saturation. New switched saturation-dependent Lyapunov functions are exploited to design a robust stabilizing state feedback controller that maximizes an estimation of the domain of attraction. The design problem of controller （coefficient matrices） is then reduced to an optimization problem with linear matrix inequality （LMI） constraints. A numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Saturated linear quadratic regulation of uncertain linear systems: Stability region estimation and controller design

This paper considers the problems of estimating the stability region (domain of attraction) and controller design for uncertain linear continuous-time systems with input saturation when linear quadratic (LQ) optimal controller is used. By exploiting the structure of the LQ controller and the property of saturation functions, it is established that the estimation of stability region can be obtained by solving linear matrix inequality (LMI) problems. Moreover, an iterative LMI (ILMI) algorithm is presented to design an LQ controller such that the largest estimated stability region can be obtained. Two examples are given to compare our results with existing ones.     

Stability and stabilization of linear sampled-data systems with multi-rate samplers and time driven zero order holds

In multi-rate sampled-data systems, a continuous-time plant is controlled by a discrete-time controller which is located in the feedback loop between sensors with different sampling rates and actuators with different refresh rates. The main contribution of this paper is to propose sufficient Krasovskii-based stability and stabilization criteria for linear sampled-data systems, with multi-rate samplers and time driven zero order holds. For stability analysis, it is assumed that an exponentially stabilizing controller is already designed in continuous-time and is implemented as a discrete-time controller. For each sensor (or actuator), the problem of finding an upper bound on the lowest sampling frequency (or refresh rate) that guarantees exponential stability is cast as an optimization problem in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Furthermore, sufficient conditions for controller synthesis are formulated as LMIs. It is shown through examples that choosing the right sensors (or actuators) with adequate sampling frequencies (or refresh rates) has a considerable impact on stability of the closed-loop system.     

Finite-time control of discrete-time linear systems

In this note, we consider the finite-time stabilization of discrete-time linear systems subject to disturbances generated by an exosystem. Finite-time stability can be used in all those applications where large values of the state should not be attained, for instance in the presence of saturations. The main result provided in the note is a sufficient condition for finite-time stabilization via state feedback. This result is then used to find some sufficient conditions for the existence of an output feedback controller guaranteeing finite-time stability. All the conditions are then reduced to feasibility problems involving linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the proposed methodology.     

LMI-based robust control of uncertain discrete-time piecewise affine systems

The main contribution of this paper is to present stability synthesis results for discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems with polytopic time-varying uncertainties and for discrete-time PWA systems with norm-bounded uncertainties respectively. The basic idea of the proposed approaches is to construct piecewise-quadratic (PWQ) Lyapunov functions to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop systems. The partition information of the PWA systems is taken into account and each polytopic operating region is outer approximated by an ellipsoid, then sufficient conditions for the robust stabilization are derived and expressed as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Two examples are given to illustrate the proposed theoretical results.     

Delay-range-dependent control synthesis for time-delay systems with actuator saturation

The control synthesis problem for a class of linear time-delay systems with actuator saturation is investigated in this paper. The time delay is considered to be time-varying and has lower and upper bounds. A delay-range-dependent approach is adopted and the corresponding existence conditions of the stabilizing state-feedback controller are derived in terms of LMIs. An estimate for the domain of attraction of the origin can be obtained for the underlying systems with different time-delay ranges. Two numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness and less conservatism of the developed theoretical results.     

Relaxed delay-dependent stabilization criteria for discrete-time fuzzy systems based on a switching fuzzy model and piecewise Lyapunov functions

This paper presents delay-dependent stability analysis and controller synthesis methods for discrete-time Takagi-Sugeno （T-S） fuzzy systems with time delays. The T-S fuzzy system is transformed to an equivalent switching fuzzy system. Consequently, the delay-dependent stabilization criteria are derived for the switching fuzzy system based on the piecewise Lyapunov function. The proposed conditions are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities （LMIs）. The interactions among the fuzzy subsystems are considered in each subregion, and accordingly the proposed conditions are less conservative than the previous results. Since only a set of LMIs is involved, the controller design is quite simple and numerically tractable. Finally, a design example is given to show the validity of the proposed method.     

A new stability analysis and controller design method for discrete-time linear systems with saturation nonlinearities

The problems of stability analysis and controllers design for discrete-time linear systems subject to state saturation nonlinearities are investigated in this paper. Both full state saturation and partial state saturation are considered. It is well known to all that the controller design problem under state saturation is very difficult and complex to deal with. In order to overcome the difficulty, a new and tractable system is constructed, and it can be proved that the constructed system is with the same domain of attraction as the original system. With the aid of this property, to estimate the domain of attraction of the original system, an LMI-based method is presented for estimating the domain of attraction of the origin for the new constructed system under state saturation. Further, two optimization algorithms are developed for constructing dynamic output-feedback controllers and state feedback controllers, respectively, which guarantee that the domain of attraction of the origin for the closed-loop system is as ’large’ as possible. An example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method.     

H∞ controller synthesis for pendulum-like systems

This paper focus on a stabilization problem for a class of nonlinear systems with periodic nonlinearities, called pendulum-like systems. A notion of Lagrange stabilizability is introduced, which extends the concept of Lagrange stability to the case of controller synthesis. Based on this concept, we address the problem of designing a linear dynamic output controller which stabilizes (in the Lagrange sense) a pendulum-like system within the framework of the H_∞ control theory. Lagrange stabilizability conditions for uncertainty-free systems and systems with norm-bounded uncertainty in the linear part are derived, respectively. When these conditions are satisfied, the desired stabilization output feedback controller can be constructed via feasible solutions of a certain set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).