Control system Compensators:

A control system is usually required to meet three time response specifications, namely, steady
state accuracy, damping factor and settling time. To get the desired design with minimum errors
and to adjust the parameters of the overall system to satisfy the design criterion an additional
subsystem called 'Compensator ‘ must be used.
This compensator may be used in series with the plant in the forward path or in the feedback
path shown in Fig. below. The compensation in the forward path is known as series or cascade
compensation and the later is known as feedback compensation. The compensator may be a
passive network or an active network.

Series compensation Feedback compensation

In general the series compensation is much simpler than the feed back compensation.But the
series compensation frequently require additional amplifiers to increase the gain and to provide
isolation.i.e to avoid power dissipation the series compensator is inserted in the lowest energy
point in the feed forward path.In general the number of components required in feed back
compensation will be less than the number of components in series compensation.
There are three important types of compensators.(i) Lead Compensator (ii) Lag compensator and
(iii) Lag-Lead compensator.
In a network ,when a sinusoidal input signal ei is applied at its input and if the steady state
output eo has a phase lead then the network is called a lead network. Similarly In the network for
a sinusoidal input ei ,if the steady state output has a phase lag ,then the network is called a lag
network.
Similarly in a network for a sinusoidal input .if the steady state out put has both phase lag and
lead ,but different frequency regions ,then the network is called lag-lead network.Generally the
phase lag occurs at low frequency regions and the phase lead occurs at higher frequency
region.A compensator having the characteristics of a lead network ,lag network or lead-lag
network is called a lead compensator ,lag compensator or lag-lead compensator.
The lead compensators, lag compensators and lag-lead compensators are be designed either
using electronic components like operational amplifiers or using Root Locus methods. The first
type are called electronic lag compensators .The second type are Root locus compensators. The
Root locus compensators are have many advantages over electronic type.
Lead compensation basically speeds up the response of the control system and increase the
stability of the system. Lag compensation improves the steady –state accuracy of the system but
reduces the speed of the response. If improvements in both transient response and steady state
response is required ,both lead compensator and lag compensator are used simultaneously .In
general using a single lag-lead compensator is always economical.
Lag-lead compensation combines the advantage of lag and lead compensation. Since, the lag –
lead compensator possesses two poles and two zeros ,such a compensation increases the order of
the system by 2 ,unless the cancellation of the poles and zeros occurs in the compensated system.