On a Convex Parameter Space Method for Linear Control Design of Uncertain Systems

This paper presents a new procedure for continuous and discrete-time linear control systems design. It consists of the definition of a convex programming problem in the parameter space that, when solved, provides the feedback gain. One of the most important features of the procedure is that additional design constraints are easily incorporated in the original formulation, yielding solutions to problems that have raised a great deal of interest within the last few years. This is precisely the case of the decentralized control problem and the quadratic stabilizability problem of uncertain systems with both dynamic and input uncertain matrices. In this last case, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a linear stabilizing gain are provided and, to the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first numerical procedures able to handle and solve this interesting design problem for high-order, continuous-time or discrete-time linear models. The theory is illustrated by examples.