Robust Performance Controller Synthesis Based on Discrete‐Time Noncausal Linear Periodically Time‐Varying Scaling

This paper is concerned with the technique called discrete‐time noncausal linear periodically time‐varying (LPTV) scaling for robust stability analysis and synthesis. It is defined through the lifting treatment of discrete‐time systems, and naturally leads to a sort of noncausal operation of signals. In the robust stability analysis of linear time‐invariant (LTI) systems, it has been shown that even static noncausal LPTV scaling induces some frequency‐dependent scaling when it is interpreted in the context of lifting‐free treatment. This paper first discusses in detail different aspects of the effectiveness of noncausal LPTV scaling, with the aim of showing its effectiveness in controller synthesis. More precisely, we study the robust performance controller synthesis problem, where we allow the controllers to be LPTV. As in the LTI robust performance controller synthesis problem, we tackle our problem with an iterative method without guaranteed convergence to a globally optimal controller. Despite such a design procedure, the closed‐loop H_∞ performance is expected to improve as the period of the controller is increased, and we discuss how the frequency‐domain properties of noncausal LPTV scaling could contribute to such improvement. We demonstrate with a numerical example that an effective LPTV controller can be designed for a class of uncertainties for which the well‐known μ‐synthesis fails to derive even a robust stabilization controller.