Model output following control of a networked thermal process

In this paper, model output following control based on command generator tracker is designed and applied to networked aluminum plate thermal process. One of the most important problems on networked system is the time delay problem. An explorative technique is that time delay is approximated as high order rational transfer functions. Therefore, the approximated high order system must be analyzed. Model output following control based on command generator tracker is proposed. The appeal of this method is that it does not require the reference model to be of the same order as the plant and the knowledge of the plant order is not needed. However, alternate assumptions are needed to ensure closed-loop stability. One of them is almost strictly positive real condition such that robust parallel compensator is designed to transform the approximated plant with high order lag elements into almost strictly positive real. Finally, simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed design scheme.