A Primal-Dual method for low order H∞ controller synthesis

When designing robust controllers, H_∞ synthesis is a common tool to use. The controllers that result from these algorithms are typically of very high order, which complicates implementation. However, if a constraint on the maximum order of the controller is set, that is lower than the order of the (augmented) system, the problem becomes nonconvex and it is relatively hard to solve. These problems become very complex, even when the order of the system is low. The approach used in this work is based on formulating the constraint on the maximum order of the controller as a polynomial (or rational) equation. By using the fact that the polynomial (or rational) is non-negative on the feasible set, the problem is reformulated as an optimization problem where the nonconvex function is to be minimized over a convex set defined by linear matrix inequalities. The proposed method is evaluated together with a wellknown method from the literature. The results indicate that the proposed method performs slightly better.