CHARACTERISTIC EQUATIONS AND ROBUST STABILITY OF A SIMPLIFIED PREDICTIVE CONTROL ALGORITHM

In predictive control, control calculations are done such that the difference between the desired and the predicted response of the process is minimized. The number of points on the prediction horizon at which the error is minimized and the number of future control moves considered affect the on-line computational effort involved in the solution of the constrained optimization problem. Earlier papers have shown that the control performance obtained using the DMC algorithm can also be obtained by using a simplified algorithm where the error is minimized at one point and one future control move is calculated. Because of its computational advantages, the simplified algorithm is analyzed further in this paper. Its transfer function is compared with the transfer function of the DMC algorithm. Characteristic equations to select tuning parameters are presented. The paper also compares the robust stability of the simplified and the DMC algorithms on SISO and MIMO process models. The results provide additional support to the viability of the simplified algorithm and thus indicate that it is possible for some processes to benefit from predictive control with only modest computational resources.