Negative feedback

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Negative feedback occurs when the monitoring of a process is used to influence the operation of the process
itself, minimizing undesirable variations in its operation. Feedback can produce stability and reduce the effect of
fluctuations. Negative feedback loops in which just the right amount of correction is applied in the most timely
manner can be very stable, accurate, and responsive.
Negative feedback is widely used in mechanical and electronic engineering, but it also occurs naturally within
living organisms,
[1][2]
and can be seen in many other fields from chemistry and economics to social behavior and
the climate. General negative feedback systems are studied in control systems engineering. A more qualitative
application of feedback is found in educational and management assessment, which is related by Roos and
Hamilton to the early work oncybernetics by Norbert Wiener.
[3][4][5]

1. Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Overview
3 Applications
o 3.1 Error-controlled regulation
o 3.2 Negative feedback amplifier
o 3.3 Operational amplifier circuits
o 3.4 Mechanical engineering
o 3.5 Control systems
o 3.6 Biology and chemistry
o 3.7 Economics
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
2. History[edit]
Negative feedback as a control technique may be seen in the refinements of the water clock introduced
by Ktesibios of Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. Self-regulating mechanisms have existed since antiquity, and
were used to maintain a constant level in the reservoirs of water clocks as early as 200 BCE.
[6]
Cornelius
Drebbel had built thermostatically-controlled incubators and ovens in the early 1600s,
[7]
James Watt regulated
the speed of the steam engine using agovernor (patented in 1788), and James Clerk Maxwell in 1868 described
"component motions" associated with these governors that lead to a decrease in a disturbance or the amplitude
of an oscillation.
[8]

The general idea of feedback was well established by the 1920s, in reference to a means of boosting the gain of
an electronic amplifier.
[9]
Friis and Jensen described this action as "positive feedback" and made passing
mention of a contrasting "negative feed-back action" in 1924.
[10]
Harold Stephen Black detailed the use of
negative feedback in electronic amplifiers in 1934, where he defined negative feedback as a type of coupling
that reduced the gain of the amplifier, in the process greatly increasing its stability and bandwidth.
[11][12]
Nyquist
and Bode built on Blacks work to develop a theory of amplifier stability, but chose to define "negative" as
applying to the polarity of the loop (rather than the effect on the gain), which gave rise to some confusion over
basic definitions.
[9]

Early researchers in the area of cybernetics subsequently generalized the idea of negative feedback to cover
any goal-seeking or purposeful behavior.
[13]

All purposeful behavior may be considered to require negative feed-back. If a goal is to be attained, some
signals from the goal are necessary at some time to direct the behavior.
Cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener helped to formalize the concepts of feedback control, defining feedback in
general as "the chain of the transmission and return of information",
[14]
and negative feedback as the case when:
The information fed back to the control center tends to oppose the departure of the controlled from the
controlling quantity...
(p97)

While the view of feedback as any "circularity of action" helped to keep the theory simple and
consistent, Ashby pointed out that, while it may clash with definitions that require a "materially evident"
connection, "the exact definition of feedback is nowhere important".
[1]
Ashby pointed out the limitations of the
concept of "feedback":
The concept of 'feedback', so simple and natural in certain elementary cases, becomes artificial and of little use
when the interconnections between the parts become more complex...Such complex systems cannot be treated
as an interlaced set of more or less independent feedback circuits, but only as a whole. For understanding the
general principles of dynamic systems, therefore, the concept of feedback is inadequate in itself. What is
important is that complex systems, richly cross-connected internally, have complex behaviors, and that these
behaviors can be goal-seeking in complex patterns.
(p54)

Further confusion arose after BF Skinner introduced the terms positive and negative reinforcement,
[15]
both of
which can be considered negative feedback mechanisms in the sense that they try to minimize deviations from
the desired behavior.
[5]
In a similar context, Herold and Greller used the term "negative" to refer to the valence of
the feedback: that is, cases where a subject receives an evaluation with an unpleasant emotional connotation.
[16]

A common theme for the 10 items [in the feedback analysis] is their valence, all representing negative feedback.
Examples are being removed from a job or suffering some adverse consequence due to poor performance or
receiving more or less direct indications of dissatisfaction from co-workers or the supervisor.
To reduce confusion, later authors have suggested alternative terms such as degenerative,
[17]
self-
correcting,
[18]
balancing,
[19]
or discrepancy-reducing
[20]
in place of "negative".
3. Overview[edit]


Feedback loops in the human body
In many physical and biological systems, qualitatively different influences can oppose each other. For example,
in biochemistry, one set of chemicals drives the system in a given direction, whereas another set of chemicals
drives it in an opposing direction. If one or both of these opposing influences are non-linear, equilibrium point(s)
result.
In biology, this process (in general, biochemical) is often referred to ashomeostasis; whereas in mechanics, the
more common term is equilibrium.
In engineering, mathematics and the physical, and biological sciences, common terms for the points around
which the system gravitates include: attractors, stable states, eigenstates/eigenfunctions, equilibrium points,
and setpoints.
In control theory, negative refers to the sign of the multiplier in mathematical models for feedback. In delta
notation, output is added to or mixed into the input. In multivariate systems, vectors help to illustrate how
several influences can both partially complement and partially oppose each other.
[9]

Some authors, in particular with respect to modelling business systems, use negative to refer to the reduction in
difference between the desired and actual behavior of a system.
[5][21]
While in a psychology
context, negative refers to the valence of the feedback - how unhappy it makes the recipient.
[16]

In contrast, positive feedback is feedback in which the system responds so as to increase the magnitude of any
particular perturbation, resulting in amplification of the original signal instead of stabilization. Any system in
which there is positive feedback together with a gain greater than one will result in a runaway situation. Both
positive and negative feedback require a feedback loop to operate.
4. Applications[edit]
There are a number of different ways to use negative feedback. Some applications are discussed below.
Error-controlled regulation[edit]


A regulator R adjusts the input to a system T so the monitored essential variables E are held to set-point values S that result
in the desired system output despite disturbances D.
[1][22]

One use of feedback is to make a system (say T) self-regulating to minimize the effect of a disturbance (say D).
Using a negative feedback loop, a measurement of some variable (for example, a process variable, say E)
is subtracted from a required value (the 'set point') to estimate an operational error in system status, which is
then used by a regulator (say R) to reduce the gap between the measurement and the required value.
[23][24]
The
regulator modifies the input to the system T according to its interpretation of the error in the status of the system.
This error may be introduced by a variety of possible disturbances or 'upsets', some slow and some
rapid.
[25]
Theregulation in such systems can range from a simple 'on-off' control to a more complex processing of
the error signal.
[26]

It may be noted that the physical form of the signals in the system change from point to point. So, for example, a
disturbance (say, a change in weather) to the heat input to a house (as an example of the system T) is
interpreted by a thermometer as a change in temperature (as an example of an 'essential variable' E), converted
by the thermostat (a 'comparator') into anelectrical error in status compared to the 'set point' S, and
subsequently used by the regulator (containing a 'controller' that commands gas control valves and an ignitor)
ultimately to change the heat provided by a furnace (an 'effector') to counter the initial weather-related
disturbance in heat input to the house.
Negative feedback amplifier[edit]


Negative feedback amplifier using ideal unilateral elements.
[27]
The feedback is negative if A
OL
> 0.
Main article: Negative feedback amplifier
The figure shows a simplified block diagram of a negative feedback amplifier in which the feedback sets the
overall ('closed-loop') amplifier gain at a value:

where the approximate value assumes A
OL
>> 1, and 1/ as set by the feedback branch is independent of
undesirable variations in the 'open-loop' gain A
OL
(for example, due to manufacturing variations between
units, or temperature effects upon components) provided only that this gain is sufficiently large. There are
other advantages to feedback in amplifiers.
[28]

The negative feedback amplifier was invented by Harold Stephen Black at Bell Laboratories in 1927, and
patented by him in 1934. Fundamentally, all electronic devices (e.g., vacuum tubes, bipolar transistors, MOS
transistors) exhibit somenonlinear behavior. Negative feedback corrects this by trading unused gain for
higher linearity (lower distortion). An amplifier with too large an open-loop gain, possibly in a specific
frequency range, will also produce too large a feedback signal in that same range. This feedback signal,
when subtracted from the original input, will act to reduce the original input, also by "too large" an amount.
This "too small" input will be amplified again by the "too large" open-loop gain, creating a signal that is "just
right". The net result is a flattening of the amplifier's gain over all frequencies (desensitising). Though much
more accurate, amplifiers with negative feedback can become unstable if not designed correctly, causing
them to oscillate. Harry Nyquist of Bell Laboratories managed to work out a theory about how to make this
behaviour stable.
Negative feedback is used in this way in many types of amplification systems to stabilize and improve their
operating characteristics (see e.g., operational amplifiers).
Operational amplifier circuits[edit]
Main article: Operational amplifier applications


A voltage amplifier using an operational amplifier to set the voltage across R
1
to V
in
.
Many operational amplifier circuits employ negative feedback. A simple example is the op-amp voltage
amplifier shown in the figure. Ideally the operational amplifier draws no current from the resistor divider, and
it drives the voltage difference between its two inputs to zero. Consequently, the voltage gain of this circuit is
derived as:
.
Because the op-amp drives the difference in voltages at its two inputs to zero regardless of the circuit
output or the operation of the external resistor network, the ideal op-amp circuit does not appear to fit
the definition of 'feedback' as a defense against unwanted disturbances. However, if the ideal op-amp is
replaced by a realistic op-amp with a finite gain and other nonidealities, a circuit analysis in some ways
resembles the analysis of the negative feedback amplifier. That is, unwanted disturbances in the
amplifier properties that would appear in an open-loop operation of the op-amp are suppressed by the
external circuit when the op-amp gain is large.
[29]

Mechanical engineering[edit]


The fly-ball governor is an early example of negative feedback.
Negative feedback was first implemented in the 16th Century with the invention of the centrifugal
governor. Its operation is most easily seen in its use by James Watt to control the speed of his steam
engine. Two heavy balls on an upright frame rotate at the same speed as the engine. As their speed
increases they swing up and outwards due to centrifugal force. This causes them to lift a mechanism
that closes the steam inlet valve, and the engine slows. When the speed of the engine falls too far, the
balls will fall by gravity and open the steam valve.
Control systems[edit]


The ballcock or float valve uses negative feedback to control the water level in a cistern.
Examples of the use of negative feedback to control its system are: thermostatcontrol, the phase-locked
loop, control of water level (see diagram at left), and temperature regulation in animals.
A simple and practical example is a thermostat. When the temperature in a heated room reaches a
certain upper limit, the room heating is switched off so that the temperature begins to fall. When the
temperature drops to a lower limit, the heating is switched on again. Provided the limits are close to
each other, a steady room temperature is maintained. Similar control mechanisms are used in cooling
systems, such as an air conditioner, arefrigerator, or a freezer.
Biology and chemistry[edit]


Control of endocrine hormones by negative feedback.
Some biological systems exhibit negative feedback such as the baroreflex in blood pressure regulation
and erythropoiesis. Many biological process (e.g., in thehuman anatomy) use negative feedback.
Examples of this are numerous, from the regulating of body temperature, to the regulating of
blood glucose levels. The disruption of feedback loops can lead to undesirable results: in the case of
blood glucose levels, if negative feedback fails, the glucose levels in the blood may begin to rise
dramatically, thus resulting in diabetes.
For hormone secretion regulated by the negative feedback loop: when gland X releases hormone X, this
stimulates target cells to release hormone Y. When there is an excess of hormone Y, gland X "senses"
this and inhibits its release of hormone X. As shown in the figure, most endocrine hormones are
controlled by aphysiologic negative feedback inhibition loop, such as the glucocorticoidssecreted by
the adrenal cortex. The hypothalamus secretes corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which directs
the anterior pituitary gland to secreteadrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). In turn, ACTH directs the
adrenal cortex to secrete glucocorticoids, such as cortisol. Glucocorticoids not only perform their
respective functions throughout the body but also negatively affect the release of further stimulating
secretions of both the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, effectively reducing the output of
glucocorticoids once a sufficient amount has been released.
[30]

Economics[edit]
In economics, automatic stabilisers are government programs that work as negative feedback to
dampen fluctuations inreal GDP.