Improved stability analysis and gain-scheduled controller synthesis for parameter-dependent systems

Abstract

We present new algorithms for robust stability analysis and gain-scheduled controller synthesis for linear systems affected by time-varying parametric uncertainties. These new techniques can also be applied to parameter-dependent nonlinear systems with real-rational nonlinearities. Sufficient conditions for robust stability, as well as conditions for the existence of a robustly stabilizing gain-scheduled controller, are given in terms of a finite number of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs); explicit formulas for constructing robustly stabilizing gain-scheduled controllers are given in terms of the feasible set of these LMIs. The improvement offered by our approach over existing methods for stability analysis and gain-scheduled controller synthesis for parameter-dependent linear systems are analyzed in theory. Numerical examples demonstrate that our approach can offer significant improvement in practice.