The Study of Predictive Control System Based on Coincidence Points Technology

Nana Zhu, Lifang Zhou

Department of Control Science and EngineeringZhejiang UniversityHangzhou 310027 E-mail: nnzhu, lfzhou@iipc.zju.edu.cn

Abstract: Predictive control is actually widely used for industrial process control. A big number of points in the predictive horizon and control horizon are often chosen not only to ensure the quality of the dynamic process for slow processes but also to get a better robustness for the control system. But it will raise the computational effort of the controller. Blocking and coincidence points technology can reduce the computation time while keeping the length of the horizon, which consider a reduced number of points in the predictive horizon (coincidence points) as well as in the control horizon (blocking point). Base on step response, a new method of selecting coincidence points is proposed in this paper. The simulation results show that this method could not only achieve the objective of simplifying the calculation, but also have certain advantages in the fast performance and stability. Also, this method is simpler and more practical. Key Words: slow process, predictive control, blocking technique, coincidence points

INTRODUCTION

Besides the PID control algorithms, model predictive control (MPC) algorithms have reached a wide and successful industrial acceptance. Its intuitively appealing and flexible formulation, together with its capability for dealing with constraints, nonlinearities, and hybrid systems has been a major advantage. This trend is increasing as effective industrial program packages are available for predictive control. In the standard MPC implementation, the actual and forthcoming control signal values in a given horizon are calculated by minimizing a quadratic cost function which evaluates the difference between the reference signal and the predicted process output in a given future horizon. The degrees of freedom of MPC problem correspond to the number of inputs m multiplied with the prediction horizon P. The degrees of freedom are the dominating factor for complexity, regardless of whether the optimization problem is solved on-line, or the equivalent feedback solution is derived off-line [1,2]. Predictive control is often used with very long horizons, once because of the often deployed slow processes, but also to achieve a better robustness of the control loop. On the other hand, the problem with long horizons is that the computational effort of the controller rises with the length of both horizons. The length of the predictive horizon raises the computational effort for the necessary simulations while the length of the control horizon raises the computational effort for the optimization of the cost function by increasing the optimization dimension. So, one of the challenges of MPC is how to ease the computational requirements, which have
This work is supported by Zhejiang Province Education Project (Y200701873) National Natural Science Foundation of China 40740420661and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Y1080406

also attracted attention of many researchers and control practitioners [9-12]. In order to handle such long horizons a common technique is to consider a reduced number of points in the predictive horizon as well as in the control horizon. e.g. reference [3-6] reduce the degrees of freedom by fixing the input or its derivatives to be constant over several time-steps. Halldorsson [8] repeats at each time-step the optimization by dividing the prediction horizon into two parts, keeping the second part of the solution fixed and doubling the sampling rate in the first half, until a reasonable sampling time is reached. Haber [7] studied the choice of the optimal length of the horizons as well as the best allocation of the reduced number of points in both horizons, which are optimized by a genetic algorithm in subject to the minimum overshoot and the shortest settling time. In this paper, based on the analysis of reference [3-8], a new selection method of output predictive points (coincidence points) of predictive control based on step response is introduced, which is simple and practical to reduce the computation burden. The simulation results show the method could not only achieve the objective of simplifying the calculation, but also have certain advantages in the fast performance and stability.

FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS

In order to handle such long horizons, a common technique is to consider a reduced number of points in the predictive horizon ne2 as well as in the control horizon nu. The technique which takes care only of a reduced number of points in the predictive horizon is named using coincidence points, while the technique which views only a reduced number of points in the control horizon is named blocking technique. The allocation of the points in the predictive horizon and the control horizon are described in Figure 1 and 2.

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Change are allowed in 8 points

Control horizon

k=0
(a) Conventional technique Change are allowed in reduced points

The length of the predictive horizon P is a basic tuning parameter for controllers, and is generally set long enough to capture the steady-state effects of all computed future MV moves. The length of control horizon M is another basis tuning parameter for these controllers. Increases performance is obtained as M increases, at the expense of additional computation. The SMC-Idcom and PFC controllers allow the option to simplify the calculation by considering only a subset of points in the control error horizon, which are named coincidence points. In this paper, the selection of coincidence points is studied mainly.

THE CHOICE OF COINCIDENCE POINTS

3.1 Predictive Control Algorithm

The control increment vector is calculated by minimizing the following cost function of MPC
Control horizon

J p = [YP (k +1) Yr (k +1)] Q[YP (k +1) Yr (k +1)] +UT (k)U(k)

T

(1) s.t.

k=0
(b) Blocking points technique Fig 1. Conventional technique and blocking point technique in control horizon

Yp (k + 1) = Yp 0 (k + 1) + AU (k ) + U U U + U U U where

All points in the predictive horizon

Yp (k +1) = yp (k +1/ k) yp (k + 2/ k) " yp (k + P / k) Yr (k +1) = [ yr (k +1/ k) yr (k + 2/ k) " yr (k + P / k)]

T

Yp0 (k +1) = yp0 (k +1/ k) yp0 (k + 2/ k) " yp0 (k + P / k) U(k) = [ u(k) u(k +1) " u(k + M 1)]
T

Predictive horizon

k=0
(a) Conventional technique Coincidence points in the predictive horizon

Yp(k+1) denotes the future predictive output vector, Yp0(k+1) means the initial value of predictive output vector, Yr(k+1) means the future reference output vector, U (k ) is the future control increment vector, matrix A consists of step response coefficient, Q indicate the weighting matrix for the error between the predictive output and reference output, indicate the weighting matrix of control increments.

3.2 The Choice of Coincidence Point

Predictive horizon

k=0
(a) Coincidence points technique Fig 2. Conventional technique and coincidence points technique in predictive horizon

With blocking technique, changes in the control (manipulated) variable are supposed only in given predefined points during the calculation. Coincidence points mean considering a number of appropriately located points in the prediction (control error) horizon. This way the length of the prediction horizon is kept while the number of points where the calculation is executed can be reduced significantly.

Assume that Pe is allocation of the points in the predictive horizon; Pu is allocation of the points in the control horizon. In order to satisfy the different requirements of different systems, there are three different methods to select the predictive point of output: 1) In the normal predictive control algorithms, the future predictive point of output is set to the every sampling point, that is Pe = [1, 2,..., P ] , T is the sampling period. This method is fit for the system which the output responds quickly and the predictive horizon P is not very long. 2) For the slow processes, which take place in the petrochemical industry, the predictive horizon P should be selected long enough to capture the mainly dynamic feature of system. But the longer the

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predictive horizon P is, the more complex the process is. In order to simplify the calculation, one can set the predictive points of output as a subset of points in the predictive horizon, such as equidistant interval in the time axis. That is Pe = [1, l , 2l ,..., ( P 1)l ] . 3) Haber [11] used genetic algorithm to study the choice of the optimal length of the horizons as well as the best allocation of the reduced number of points in both horizons. As most processes in industry can be approximated by an aperiodic second-order process. The aim of the optimization process was to achieve a control with reduced number of points (a maximum of 20 points for the predictive output horizon, thus 20 coincidence points, and a maximum of 10 for the control variable horizon, thus 10 blocking points). The cost factor to be optimized is described by J = J y + J u + J hor
= y , dev ( y full (k ) yred (k ))2 + u , dev (u full (k ) ured (k )) 2
k =0 k =0 100 100

1 0.8 step response 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

50 time

100

150

Fig 3 Select of coincidence points in new method

SIMULATION

T + Pe Pe > 4 T

T + Pu Pu > T

min Pe , Pu

(2) where, yfull is controlled variable, controlled with all points in the horizons; yred is controlled variable, controlled with a reduced number of points in the horizons; ufull is manipulated variable with all points in the horizons; ured is manipulated variable with a reduced number of points in the horizons; Pe is weighting factor for the allocation of the points in the predictive horizon; Pu is weighting factor for the allocation of the points in the control horizon; T / T is sum of all time constants of the process relative to the sampling time; y,dev is weighting factor for the error between the controlled variables with and without reduced horizons, here chosen to be y,dev = 1; u,dev is weighting factor for the error between the manipulated variable with and without reduced horizons, here chosen to be u,dev = 0.1.

3.3 The New Method Based on Step Response

In section 3.2, method 2) and 3) solve the complexity for slow process when the predictive output horizon is very long. But method 2) only considers the decrease of the amount of predictive outputs point, neglecting the effect to control performance. Method 3) decides the coincident points without reducing the quality of control, but it is complex and it is not practical for industrial processes. After analyzing the result of method 2) and combining with the convenience for industrial realization, a new method based on step response is proposed in this paper. The new method adopted the equidistant intervals of output value of step response, in Figure 1 corresponds to step response curves mapped to the time axis, we can get a series of the points, which are serried in the initial dynamic process, and then become sparser. This method not only are consistent with the choose principle of coincidence points, but also follow closely the step response.

Considering the following aperiodic second-order process [7] 1 P( s) = 30 s 2 + 31s + 1 And mismatch of the model 3 Pm ( s ) = 20s 2 + 15s + 1 In the case, the sampling time was T=0.2s. The amount of predictive output points is 20 and the amount of control horizon points is 6, which is consistent with the result of reference [7]. The allocation of coincidence point in the predictive output horizon Pe and blocking points in control horizon Pu are set as follows according to the method in section 3.2 1)Pe1=[1,2,3,4,,20], Pu1=[1,2,3,4,5,6] (the method standard PMC algorithms) 2) Pe2=[1,32,63,94,125,156,187,218,249,280,311,342,373, 404,435,466,497,528,559,590], Pu2=[1,2,3,4,5,6] (the method with long equidistant intervals) 3) Pe3=[3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,20,22,26, 620], Pu3=[1,2,3,4,5,6] (the method adopting genetic algorithm) 4)Pe4=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,229,263,306, 367], Pu4=[1,2,3,4,5,6,] (the method the author proposed in this paper) 5) Pe5=[1,2,3,4,,100], Pu5=[1,2,3,4,5,6] ( lengthened P of standard PMC algorithm, comparison with method 1) )
The weighting matrix Q and is equal to diag{1,1,1}, when the setpoint of output is changed from 0 to 1, the upper of the constraint of manipulated variable u is 1,the lower is 0, the rate of change u is 0.5. We have the simulations of the all methods described in the paper as follow, and the response of system is shown in Fig4, the performance value of control system is listed in Table 1.

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2 Outputs

Outputs

20

40 60 Time

80

100

20

40 Time

60

80

100

Manipulated Variables

Manipulated Variables

0.5

0.5

20

40 60 Time

80

100

20

40 Time

60

80

100

Fig 4 The response curves of system with Pe1

Fig 7 The response curves of system with Pe3

1.5 Outputs

1 Outputs
0 20 40 60 Time 80 100

1 0.5 0

0.5

0 Manipulated Variables

20

40 60 Time

80

100

Manipulated Variables

0.5

0.5

20

40 60 Time

80

100

20

40 60 Time

80

100

Fig 5 The response curves of system with Pe5

Fig 8 The response curves of system with Pe4

2
Outputs

Table1.The performance value of control system

1

performance value
0 0 20 40 60 Time 80 100

2 0.981 11 0 68.4 16.09

3 1.103 9.4 10.3 41 18.49

4 1.067 9.6 6.7 49 16.40

peak value peak time(s) overshoot (%) the setting time(s) square sum of error

Manipulated Variables

0.5

20

40 60 Time

80

100

Fig 6 The response curves of system with Pe2

We get the setting time from the error of 2%. From the figures of simulation, we can see the method 1) (standard MPC) is worst, that is instable, because P=20, and the sampling time is 0.2, we only predict the 4 second of the model. But from of step response, at least we must set 50 second (method 5). If we want to get better control result, we must lengthen the length of P. Thus, the computational burden is increased. The output is in the figure 2.

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In order to reduce the computational effort; we adopt the method 2-4). Although there is not overshoot in the method 2) from the figure 5, it is very slow, that is the setting time is too long. Method 3)and 4) can solve the problem availably. And compared to the method 3), method 4) is simpler and more practical. From the Table1, we can also see the overshoot and square sum of error of output adopting method 4) is smaller than the output adopting method 3).

CONCLUSION

Predictive control is often used with very long horizons, once because of the often deployed slow processes. The problem with long horizons is that the computational effort of the controller rises with the length of both horizons. The length of the predictive horizon raises the computational effort for the necessary simulations. In this paper, we analysis existing methods firstly, and then propose a new method, which can solve the computation problem. In order to verify the results, we choose the different points and distribution to simulate. Through simulation and analysis, we get a new way to select coincidence points. Compared with the method based on genetic algorithm, the new method are more stable. Moreover, the new method is easy to implement and simple, so the new method is feasible.

REFERENCES
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