Design of decentralized PI control systems based on Nyquist stability analysis

This paper presents a simple, but effective, design method for decentralized PI control systems with guaranteed closed-loop stability. Nyquist stability conditions are used to derive the stability region for each PI controller in terms of the controller parameters. A detuning factor for each loop is specified based on a diagonal dominance index. Then appropriate controller settings are determined using this index and the stability region. Simulation results for a variety of 2 2, 3 3, and 4 4 systems demonstrate that the proposed design method guarantees closed-loop stability and provides good set-point and load responses.