Automated synthesis of fixed structure QFT controller using piecewise linear approximation based linear programming optimization techniques

Robust controller synthesis is of great practical interest and its automation is a key concern in control system design. Automatic controller synthesis is still a open problem. Presently available automated synthesis methods of QFT controller design suffer from convergence to local minima, requirement of initial seed controller, limitation of maximum controller parameters etc,. In this paper a new, fast and efficient method has been proposed for automated synthesis of a fixed structure quantitative feedback theory (QFT) controller. The controller synthesis problem is posed as a piecewise linear approximation based linear programming problem and solved with GUROBI optimizer solver. The proposed algorithms converges to approximate global optimum and supports synthesis of controllers having large number of parameters in very less time. The proposed method is tested on two benchmark problems, and simple, low order controllers are successfully obtained in quick time.