The system-matched hold and the intermittent control separation principle

An intermittent controller is a form of hybrid controller which adds a generalised sample and hold mechanism to an underlying continuous-time feedback control system. The sampling may be non-uniform or event driven. One particular form of the hold, termed the system-matched hold (SMH) mimics the behaviour of the closed-loop feedback control signal during the intermittent intervals. It is shown in this article that this choice of hold leads to an intermittent separation principle. In particular, this simple analytical result ensures that when using the SMH, the separation properties of the underlying state-estimate feedback control system carry over to the intermittent control system. This separation principle for the SMH has the important consequence that, unlike the zero-order hold case, the stability of the closed-loop system in the fixed sampling case is not dependent on sample interval. It is therefore suggested that the SMH should replace the conventional zero-order hold in circumstances where the sample interval is unknown, time-varying or determined by events.