Self‐adaptive fractional‐order LQ‐PID voltage controller for robust disturbance compensation in DC‐DC buck converters

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a state‐dependent self‐tuning fractional control strategy for a DC‐DC buck converter in order to enhance its output voltage regulation and disturbance attenuation capability. The proposed control scheme primarily employs a ubiquitous proportional‐integral‐derivative (PID) controller, where gains are optimally selected using a linear‐quadratic state‐space tuning approach. The optimal PID controller is then augmented with fractional‐order integral and derivative operators in order to improve the controller's degrees‐of‐freedom as well as the system's overall time‐domain performance. The fractional controller's robustness against bounded exogenous disturbances, contributed by the input fluctuations and load‐step transients, is further enhanced by adaptively modulating the fractional‐orders of the integro‐differential operators as a smooth nonlinear function of controlled‐variable's error‐dynamics. An online dynamic adjustment law, comprising of a zero‐mean Gaussian function of error and its derivative, is used to individually update the two fractional orders after every sampling interval. The error derivative is evaluated by measuring the output capacitor's current in order to compensate the noise injected by parasitic impedance. The other controller parameters are tuned via particle‐swarm‐optimization algorithm. The proposed self‐adaptive control strategy renders rapid transits, minimum transient recovery time, and minimal fluctuations around steady state in the response. Its efficacy is validated through hardware in‐the‐loop experiments conducted on a buck converter prototype.