Minimum-energy regulation of a power conversion circuit

This paper presents the design and simulation of an inverse optimal control technique for regulating the output voltage in a DC-DC Boost power converter. The inverse optimal control allows to solve explicitly the optimal control law by an appropriate selection of a Lyapunov function V. Also, V depends on the particular selection of a positive definite matrix P. Then, it is shown in this article how P can be chosen by analysis performed on the physical magnitudes of the system, in order to achieve minimization of its energy through the corresponding formulation of a performance index. To this aim, simulations show how the proposed inverse optimal controller allows to regulate the output voltage on the circuit, under perturbation of the supply voltage, with dynamical performance comparable to a conventional PI controller. Nevertheless, by analyzing the energy cost of the control actions it is evident that the proposed optimal controller employs less energy to achieve the desired result, unveiling potential benefits for reducing consumption in applications. Current ongoing work is devoted to experimental verification of these predictions.