A Measurement‐Based Approach for Designing Fixed‐Order Controllers for Unknown Closed‐Loop Architecture

This paper presents a new technique to design fixed‐structure controllers for linear unknown systems using a set of measurements. In model‐based approaches, the measured data are used to identify a model of the plant for which a suitable controller can be designed. Due to the fact that real processes cannot be described perfectly by mathematical models, designing controllers using such models to guarantee some desired closed‐loop performance is a challenging task. Hence, a possible alternative to model‐based methods is to directly utilize the measured data in the design process. We propose an approach to designing structured controllers using a set of closed‐loop frequency‐domain data. The principle of such an approach is based on computing the parameters of a fixed‐order controller for which the closed‐loop frequency response fits a desired frequency response that describes some desired performance indices. This problem is formulated as an error minimization problem, which can be solved to find suitable values of the controller parameters. The main feature of the proposed control methodology is that it can be applied to stable and unstable plants. Additionally, the design process depends on a pre‐selected controller structure, which allows for the selection of low‐order controllers. An application of the proposed method to a DC servomotor system is presented to experimentally validate and demonstrate its efficacy.     

Linear circuits: a measurement‐based approach

This paper proposes a new measurement‐based approach that can solve synthesis problems in unknown linear circuits. The method makes use of a small number of measurements to determine the functional dependency of any circuit signal or variable on any set of design variables. Once the functional dependency is obtained, the design requirements can be applied to find the design parameter values. The results are described for linear direct current and alternating current circuits. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Nonparametric Approach to Design Fixed-order Controllers for Systems with Constrained Input

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - This paper presents an approach for designing fixed-structure controllers for input-constrained linear systems using frequency domain...     

Stable auto-tuning of adaptive fuzzy/neural controllers for nonlinear discrete-time systems

In direct adaptive control, the adaptation mechanism attempts to adjust a parameterized nonlinear controller to approximate an ideal controller. In the indirect case, however, we approximate parts of the plant dynamics that are used by a feedback controller to cancel the system nonlinearities. In both cases, "approximators" such as linear mappings, polynomials, fuzzy systems, or neural networks can be used as either the parameterized nonlinear controller or identifier model. In this paper, we present algorithms to tune some of the parameters (e.g., the adaptation gain and the direction of descent) for a gradient-based approximator parameter update law used for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems in both direct and indirect cases. In our proposed algorithms, the adaptation gain and the direction of descent are obtained by minimizing the instantaneous control energy. We will show that updating the adaptation gain can be viewed as a special case of updating the direction of descent. We will also compare the direct and indirect adaptive control schemes and illustrate their performance via a simple surge tank example.     

Genetic Algorithm-based Adaptive Optimization for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we address the problem of genetic algorithm optimization for jointly selecting the best group of candidate sensors and optimizing the quantization for target tracking in wireless sensor networks. We focus on a more challenging problem of how to effectively utilize quantized sensor measurement for target tracking in sensor networks by considering best group of candidate sensors selection problem. The main objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the quantization level and the group of candidate sensors selection are to be optimized in order to provide the required data of the target and to balance the energy dissipation in the wireless sensor network. Secondly, the target position is to be estimated using quantized variational filtering (QVF) algorithm. The optimization of quantization and sensor selection are based on the Fast and Elitist Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II). The proposed multi-objective (MO) function defines the main parameters that may influence the relevance of the participation in cooperation for target tracking and the transmitting power between one sensor and the cluster head (CH). The proposed algorithm is designed to: i) avoid the problem lot of computing times and operation counts, and ii) reduce the communication cost and the estimation error, which leads to a significant reduction of energy consumption and an accurate target tracking. The computation of these criteria is based on the predictive information provided by the QVF algorithm. The simulation results show that the NSGA-II -based QVF algorithm outperforms the standard quantized variational filtering algorithm and the centralized quantized particle filter.     

Bayesian methods for time‐varying state and parameter estimation in induction machines

This paper addresses the problem of nonlinear time‐varying state and parameter estimation of induction machines (IMs) on the basis of a third‐order electrical model. The objectives of this paper are threefold. The first objective is to propose the use of an improved particle filter (IPF) with better proposal distribution for nonlinear and non‐Gaussian state and parameter estimation. The second objective is to extend the state and parameter estimation techniques (i.e., extended Kalman filter (EKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF), particle filter (PF), and IPF) to better handle nonlinear and non‐Gaussian processes without a priori state information, by utilizing a time‐varying assumption of statistical parameters. In this case, the state vector to be estimated at any instant is assumed to follow a Gaussian model, where the expectation and the covariance matrix are both random. The third objective is to compare the performances of EKF, UKF, PF, and IPF in estimating the states of the power process model representing the IM (i.e, the rotor speed, the rotor flux, the stator flux, the rotor resistance, and the magnetizing inductance) and their abilities to estimate some of the key system parameters, which are needed to define the IM process model. The results show that the IPF provides a significant improvement over the PF because, unlike the PF, which depends on the choice of sampling distribution used to estimate the posterior distribution, the IPF yields an optimum choice of the sampling distribution, which also accounts for the observed data. This conclusion is also supported by the experimental results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A measurement-based approach for designing reduced-order controllers with guaranteed bounded error

The objective of this paper is to present a measurement-based control-design approach for single-input single-output linear systems with guaranteed bounded error. A wide range of control-design approaches available in the literature are based on parametric models. These models can be obtained analytically using physical laws or via system identification using a set of measured data. However, due to the complex properties of real systems, an identified model is only an approximation of the plant based on simplifying assumptions. Thus, the controller designed based on a simplified model can seriously degrade the closed-loop performance of the system. In this paper, an alternative approach is proposed to develop fixed-order controllers based on measured data without the need for model identification. The proposed control technique is based on computing a suitable set of fixed-order controller parameters for which the closed-loop frequency response fits a desired frequency response that meets the desired closed-loop performance specifications. The control-design problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming problem using the concept of bounded error. The main advantages of our proposed approach are: (1) it guarantees that the error between the computed and the desired frequency responses is less than a small value; (2) the difficulty of finding the globally optimal solution in the error minimisation problem is avoided; (3) the controller can be designed without the use of any analytical model to avoid errors associated with the identification process; and (4) low-order controllers can be designed by selecting a fixed low-order controller structure. To experimentally validate and illustrate the efficacy of the proposed approach, proportional-integral measurement-based controllers are designed for a DC (direct current) servomotor.     

Interplay of the influence of oxygen partial pressure and rf power on the properties of rf-magnetron-sputtered AZO thin films

The complex interplay between the influence of oxygen partial pressure and that of rf power on the structural, electrical and optical properties of rf-magnetron-sputtered aluminium-doped zinc oxide, AZO, thin films is illustrated. The dependence of film electrical resistance and interplanar spacing of film crystallites on rf power seems to be different at higher oxygen partial pressure values than at lower ones. Film preparation was performed at room temperature (without extra heating) and low pressure p \(=\) 0.5 mTorr, varying the rf power density between P \(=\) 0.57 and 2.83 W \(\hbox {cm}^{-2}\) at different relative oxygen partial pressure values. An explanation of film properties has been sought in terms of changes in the chemical properties of the films due to the bombardment of the films during film formation with negative oxygen ions.     

Intervention in biological phenomena modeled by S-systems

Recent years have witnessed extensive research activity in modeling biological phenomena as well as in developing intervention strategies for such phenomena. S-systems, which offer a good compromise between accuracy and mathematical flexibility, are a promising framework for modeling the dynamical behavior of biological phenomena. In this paper, two different intervention strategies, namely direct and indirect, are proposed for the S-system model. In the indirect approach, the prespecified desired values for the target variables are used to compute the reference values for the control inputs, and two control algorithms, namely simple sampled-data control and model predictive control (MPC), are developed for transferring the control variables from their initial values to the computed reference ones. In the direct approach, a MPC algorithm is developed that directly guides the target variables to their desired values. The proposed intervention strategies are applied to the glycolytic-glycogenolytic pathway and the simulation results presented demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.