Predictive Control

3Trend Analysis and Tuning of SISO Unconstrained DMC Systems

Predictive control algorithms arising from industrial processes, such as DMC and MPHC or MAC, have been widely accepted and used in industry since their appearance in the 1970s. With increasing applications it was naturally expected that the theoretical research on these algorithms could provide guidance for their applications such that people could reasonably select the design parameters to achieve desired control performance instead of a choice made fully from experience. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, the theoretical research of predictive control was mostly motivated by the need of application. It focused on exploring the relationship between the design parameters (optimization and control horizon, weighting matrices, etc.) and the closed‐loop system performances for the existing predictive control algorithms such as DMC, MAC, and later also GPC. Although this study only achieved limited results for unconstrained SISO predictive control systems and could not give satisfactory solution for complex industrial applications, the resultant quantitative or trend results on how the design parameters affect the system performance still provide valuable reference for parameter tuning in predictive control applications. In this and the next chapter, we will introduce some methods and results of the theoretical research of predictive control during this stage, with emphasis on the predictive control system analysis based ...