On timesharing of control system components

The present paper shows that the concept of component timesharing is applicable to certain types of control systems. A model in which a group of components is commutated sequentially around several control loops is presented. Two mathematical procedures, borrowed from known sampled data and state-space techniques, permit the detailed analysis of the resulting linear system. It is seen that timesharing creates cross coupling or interaction between control loops which are independent except for the shared component. There is no cross coupling in the steady state if each loop contains at least one integrator. It is concluded that timesharing is an economic proposition in which possible savings in equipment cost are balanced out against reduced system performance.