ICROS-SICE International Joint Conference 2009

August 18-21, 2009, Fukuoka International Congress Center, Japan

An Adaptive Output Feedback Control for Time-Delay Systems

with Input Disturbance
In-Hyuk Kim1 , Goo-Jong Jeong1 and Young-Ik Son1
1
NPTC, Department of Electrical Engineering, Myongji University, Yongin, Korea
(Tel : +82-31-330-6358; E-mail: (hyucin, gold85, sonyi)@mju.ac.kr)

Abstract: Time-delay and input disturbance frequently occur in control systems, which decrease the pre-dened perfor-
mance of the closed-loop system. This paper presents an output feedback controller that compensates the performance
degradation owing to time-delay and input disturbance. Simple adaptive control (SAC) and a new disturbance observer
(DOB) approaches have been combined to achieve the control purpose. It is shown that the closed-loop system can be
made robust against uncertain time-delay by using the SAC algorithm. For disturbance attenuation a new DOB structure
has been used for the non-minimum phase system caused by to the Pade approximation of time-delay. Simulation re-
sults show the performance improvement by the proposed controller for reducing the both effects of time-delay and input
disturbance.

Keywords: Time Delay, Simple Adaptive Control, Disturbance Observer, Non-minimum Phase, Smith Predictor

1. INTRODUCTION
This paper considers a system with time-delay and in-
put disturbance as shown in Fig. 1. A new adaptive out-
put feedback control is presented to cope with the effects
of the uncertain time-delay and a time-varying distur-
bance d.
Fig. 1 Typical Time-Delay System
Time-delay can be found in various practical systems,
such as chemical processes, biological systems, network
systems and so on. In order to deal with the time-delay,
Smith predictor (SP) has been widely used for a method
to maintain stable dynamic responses of the given plant
[1]. The methodology has a drawback that the value of
the time-delay needs to be exactly known to ensure the
successful performance [2].
Simple adaptive control (SAC) is a simple and robust
algorithm for unmodeled dynamics since the order of ref-
erence model can be chosen almost freely regardless of
that of controlled system [3, 4]. Because of these features
successful implementations of the SAC technique in vari-
ous domains of application have been presented over sev-
eral decades (see e.g. [5] and references therein).
This paper adopts the SAC scheme to improve the ro-
bust performance of the control system against uncertain
time-delay. It should be mentioned that the SAC method
requires the controlled plant to be almost strictly pas-
sive and its transfer function almost strictly positive real
(ASPR). It has been shown that plants with minimum-
phase transfer functions of relative degree one are ASPR.
The ASPR condition assures the convergence property of
the adaptive algorithm for the stability of the system. If
the plant does not possess ASPR, designers can realize
SPR by adding a parallel feedforward compensator (PFC)
[6, 7].
s
Since the
term of
time-delay e is expressed as
1 2 s 1 + 2 s with the rst order Pade approxi-
mation, the approximation of the time-delay makes the
plant non-minimum phase having a zero on the right half
plane. Hence, in order to design a robust controller for
time-delay systems via the SAC approach, a parallel feed-
forward compensator (PFC) should be designed with the
Pade approximation [8].
When a disturbance is added to the input side of the
plant, a control strategy should be required to reduce
the effects of the disturbance. For the purpose the dis-
turbance observer (DOB) approach has been widely em-
ployed in motion control [911]. It uses the inverse trans-
fer function of the nominal system to observe the distur-
bance and then to cancel the effects in the control signal.
Together with the SAC scheme this paper combines
a new conguration of DOB for attenuating the effects
of disturbances. Note that, since the classical DOB uti-
lizes the inverse of the given plant, the DOB applications
have been limited to minimum phase systems. Since the
Pade approximation makes the time-delay system non-
minimum phase, the classical DOB cannot be directly
applied to the system with time-delay. For that reason,
we consider a new structure of DOB for non-minimum
phase systems [12].
2. DOB FOR TIME-DELAY SYSTEM
2.1 Structure of classical DOB
Structure of the classical disturbance observer (DOB)
is shown in Fig. 2. The inverse transfer function of the
nominal system (Pn1 (s)) is used to estimate the distur-
bance d. P (s) represents the transfer function of the real
system. The low-pass lter Q(s) is called as Q-lter in
the disturbance observers. The input signal v is created
by C(s), and n is the measurement noise.

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 phase. We can see that the system (Pn + V )(s) is mini-
mum phase when the zeros of 1 + (Pn V 1 )(s) have their
negative real parts. This implies the inverse transfer func-
tion (Pn + V )1 (s) is stable. In addition, for a good dis-
turbance attenuation performance the parallel connection
should be sufciently small at the frequency range of the
disturbance. To satisfy the conditions the purpose the V-
lter is designed with the inverse of a PID controller.
Fig. 2 Structure of DOB
Kd s2 + Kp s + Ki
C(s) = (4)
s
In Fig. 2 the output y is described as V (s) = C 1 (s) (5)

y = Pn +(P Pn ) v +
P Pn P Pn (1Q)
Pn +(P Pn )Q d
If |P (s)| |V (s)| at the frequency range of distur-
PQ (1) bance, (P + V )(s) can be approximated by
Pn +(P Pn )Q n.

From the analysis of the previous results on DOB- (P + V )(s) P (s). (6)
based controllers, we assume that disturbance (d) and
The output in Fig. 3 is obtained by
measurement noise (n) are separated from each other in
the frequency domain. If Q(s) 1 in lower frequency P (Pn +V )
y = (Pn +V )(1Q)+(P V )Q v
range and Q(s) 0 in higher frequency range, the ef- P (Pn +V )(1Q)+P V Q
fects of the disturbance and the measurement noise are + (P n +V )(1Q)+(P +V )Q
d (7)
PQ
cancelled, respectively. As a result, the output y in (1) (Pn +V )(1Q)+(P +V )Q n.
can be approximated by
If Q(s) 1 and V (s) 0 in low frequency range, the
y Pn (s)v. (2) effect of the disturbance disappears. Similarly, if Q(s)
0 in high frequency side, the effect of the measurement
The Q-lter is designed by considering the robustness noise can be ignored [12].
and performance to attenuate the effects of disturbance
and measurement noise [11]. The binomial lter is used 2.3 Design of V-Filter for Time-Delay system
in this paper. Let us dene P (s) as

n
P (s) = G(s)es . (8)
m Ci ( s)
i
i=0
Q(s) = , Q(0) = 1. (3)
( s + 1)m By using the method of [14] we assume that the plant
P (s) is reduced to the model of the form
2.2 DOB for non-minimum phase system

Note that Pn1 (s) was used in the structure of DOB of es
P (s) = G(s)e

s
= . (9)
Fig. 2. Hence the closed-loop system with the classical as2 + bs + c
DOB diverges if the given plant is non-minimum phase
having a zero on the right half plane [13]. This section With this model a candidate of the stabilizing PID con-
introduces a new conguration of DOB, as shown in Fig. troller C(s) is obtained by
3, for non-minimum phase systems.
as2 + bs + c
C(s) = V 1 (s) = k (10)
s
where k is tuned by the root locus method [14].
To obtain the nominal plant Pn (s) the Pade approxi-
mation is considered. By using the rst order approxima-
tion of (9), the nominal plant Pn (s) is obtained by

Fig. 3 DOB for non-minimum phase system
Assume that Pn (s) is a non-minimum phase system.
It is well-known that the zeros of the systems cannot be
changed by using a feedback connection. For a paral-
lel connection of V-lter in Fig. 3, V (s) is constructed
so that the augmented system (Pn + V )(s) is minimum
1
1 s/2
Pn (s) = . (11)
as2 + bs + c 1 + s/2
If the C(s) stabilizes Pn (s), the characteristic polyno-
mial 1 + (Pn V 1 )(s) is Hurwitz. This means the inverse
transfer function (Pn + V )1 (s) in Fig. 3 is stable.
When the new structure of DOB in Fig. 3 is success-
ful, the input-output relation of the time-delay system is
approximated by the equation (2) with (11).

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 3. PROPOSED CONTROLLER the augmented system DP (s) + P F C has relative de-
gree one and is minimum phase, the SAC approach can
3.1 Design of PFC for SAC
be applied to achieve robust performance [4, 5].
When Smith predictor (SP) is used to deal with the If we let ey = ym yp , the output of SAC block is
time-delay systems, the accurate information on the sys- dened as
tem parameters and the delay time are necessary. To
improve the robustness against uncertain time-delay and up = K(t)r(t) (13)
input disturbance, this paper considers the SAC (simple
adaptive control) algorithm as an outer-loop controller in where r(t) = [ey xm um ]T ; K(t) = KI (t) + KP (t);
Fig. 2. This section rst presents an SAC-based robust
control for the time-delay system P (s) as shown in Fig. KI (t) = [ KIe (t) KIx (t) KIu (t) ]; (14)
4. K I (t) = ey rT I [ KIe 0 0 ]; (15)
KP (t) = ey rT P ; (16)

and is a small positive constant; I and P are constant

Fig. 4 SAC for Time-Delay System
Suppose that the plant P (s) is required to asymptoti-
cally track output of the model described as
x m = Am xm + Bm um
(12)
ym = Cm xm .
The model can be of any order, just sufciently large to
create the desired command for the plant. In the simula-
tion the model has been designed with a rst-order low-
pass lter.
SAC requires the transfer function of the controlled
plant to be ASPR. Therefore, in order to design a robust
controller for non-ASPR plants via the SAC approach, a
PFC (parallel feedforward compensator) should be added
to the plant such that the augmented plant satises the
ASPR condition. The PFC addition is sufciently small
so the actual plant output is very close to the augmented
output.
matrices. The gains must maintain stability of controlled
system and bring the tracking error to zero [3, 5].
3.2 Combined Controller: SAC+DOB
An interesting feature of the DOB in Fig. 2 is that it
can be used as an inner-loop controller so that the real
uncertain plant in the presence of disturbances is forced
to behave like the nominal plant without the disturbances
and uncertainties. Therefore, the DOB can be combined
with any outer-loop controller that is designed without
considering the plant uncertainties and disturbances.
To improve the robustness against uncertain time-
delay and input disturbance, this paper proposes the con-
troller structure that the SAC is combined with the new
DOB in Fig. 3. Figure 6 shows the structure of proposed
controller.
4. SIMULATION
Computer simulations are carried out for the verica-
tion of the validity of the proposed control structure. Con-
sider the time-delay system in [14]:
1
P (s) = e0.5s . (17)
(s + 1)(s + 5)2
The P (s) is a real model of the plant. By the analysis
of [14] the system is approximated by the second-order
model
1
P (s) = e0.606s . (18)
7.724s2 + 32.317s + 25.220
The model (18) with the rst order Pade approximation
results in the nominal system represented by

Fig. 5 PFC for non-ASPR System s + 3.3003

Pn (s) = . (19)
7.724s3 + 57.81s2 + 131.9s + 82.23
The design procedure consists of two steps based on This model Pn (s) is used to design SAC and DOB.
the nominal plant (11). We rst design the LTI controller As the next step we design the LTI controller D(s)
D(s) in Fig. 5 that stabilizes the nominal system (11). and PFC for SAC. Figure 7 shows a pole-zero map of the
(In the next section a PID controller is designed for this nominal plant. The transfer function of the LTI controller
system.) Then a stabilizing PD controller is constructed is obtained by
for the series connection of D(s) and (11). Inverse of
the obtained PD controller is used for the PFC in Fig. 5, 7.724s2 + 32.317s + 25.220
which renders the augmented system to be ASPR. When D(s) = 0.0836 . (20)
s

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 Fig. 6 The structure of proposed controller

In order to apply the new DOB the V-lter is designed

1
PoleZero Map using D(s) as follows
PoleZero Map
s
V (s) = 0.836 . (23)
0.5
7.724s2 + 32.317s + 25.220
The magnitude of V (s) is desired to be small in the fre-
Imaginary Axis

quency range of the disturbance as shown in Fig. 9.

0.5

20
1
4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4
Real Axis

0
Fig. 7 Pole-zero map of nominal plant
20

The controller gain (K) was adjusted using the root locus 40 P
n
method. P +V
n
A PD controller is constructed to stabilize the series 60 3 2 1 0
connection DPn (s). Note that the inverse of the PD con- 10 10 10 10
troller has relative degree one. The selected function is Fig. 9 Magnitude Bode Plot for V (s)
1
Z(s) = . (21) The simulation parameters are given in Table 1. This
s + 4.3
simulation includes a time-varying disturbance and un-
The parallel connection (DPn +Z)(s) satises the ASPR
certain time-delay when = 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9.
condition and the magnitude |(DPn + Z)(j)| is almost
same as |DPn (j)| at low frequency range. Figure 8 Table 1 Simulation parameters
shows the magnitude Bode plots that compares the mag-
Command input 1
nitudes.
= 0.3,
Time Delay = 0.6,
40
= 0.9
30 Disturbance 10 sin 0.1t
20 m=4
10 Q-lter n=3
0 = 0.05
10 DP
n Fig. 10 shows the disturbance attenuation property of
20 DP + PFC
n
the new structure DOB included in Fig. 6. The advan-
3 2 1 0
10 10 10 10 tage of the SAC over SP (Smith predictor) is compared in
Fig. 8 Magnitude Bode Plot for PFC Fig. 11. We can see that the SAC improves robust perfor-
mance against the uncertain time-delay .
By the SAC algorithm the augmented plant is forced
to follow the output of a simple st-order model 5. CONCLUSION
10 This paper proposes an adaptive output feedback con-
M (s) = . (22) troller that combines the SAC and the new DOB approach
s + 10

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to improve the robust performance of the control system
against uncertain time-delay and input disturbance. Since
the time-delay system is non-ASPR, we construct a PFC
and a V-lter to apply the combined controller to time-
delay systems. Through the numerical simulations, we
have shown that the proposed controller is effective for
the plant with the uncertain time-delay and the input dis-
turbance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the 2nd Brain Korea 21
Project. This work was supported by the ERC program
of MOST/KOSEF (Next-generation Power Technology
Center).
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of Disturbance Observer for Non-minimum Phase
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