Multivar – A MATLAB Based MIMO Control System Design Application

Abstract

A newly developed, MATLAB-based, MIMO control design application, named Multivar has been designed for researchers, engineers and engineering students who are investigating and designing MIMO control systems. This application has greater operation flexibility than its predecessors because of its two modes - Function mode (which allows users to access the individual functions in any stage of the control design process) and GUI mode (a wizard-based approach utilizing the functions from the Function mode). The application can support more input model types than its predecessors as it is capable of supporting LTI systems that either contain or do not contain time delays. It also provides support in the areas of model creation, conversion, approximation and analysis, input-output pairing, decoupling, controller design, and evaluation, while adding techniques that are not found in other toolboxes such as SVD analysis and decoupling. In addition, it allows the user to save or export the final control design or compare with saved designs so that the users might select the design that best satisfies their needs.