Hierarchical implementation of large-scale control systems and its application to air-conditioning systems

In this paper, we discuss a hierarchical implementation method for model predictive control of large-scale systems with both continuous-valued and discrete-valued control inputs. In our previously proposed method, the notion of virtual control inputs was introduced. In online computation, first, continuous-valued control inputs and virtual control inputs are calculated. Next, using the obtained virtual control inputs, only discrete-valued control inputs at the current time are calculated. However, quantization errors in the steady state and applications have not been considered so far. In this paper, we propose the improved version, and apply the proposed method to air-conditioning systems.