Multiestimation based discrete adaptive control of LTI continuous plants with unknown bounded external time delays

This paper addresses the problem of controlling an unknown continuous linear time invariant plant with external point delays using a multiestimation scheme. The plant is supposed to be unknown while the delay is also supposed to be unknown but upper-bounded with known upper bound. The control algorithm is based on a multiestimation scheme. The estimation scheme is composed of a bank of estimation algorithms running in parallel, being each one associated to a discretization of the plant with a different value of the discrete time delay. In this way, a conceptually simple control design for unknown plants with external point delays is presented. Furthermore, the scheme has revealed to be potentially capable of estimating an approximation of the actual delay of the plant as simulation examples have pointed out. This is an important novelty since nowadays there are not effective methods to estimate simultaneously the delay of the continuous plant and its parameters