Saturation-based switching anti-windup design for linear systems with nested input saturation

This paper proposes a saturation-based switching anti-windup design for the enlargement of the domain of attraction of a linear system subject to nested saturation. A nestedly saturated linear feedback is expressed as a linear combination of a set of auxiliary linear feedbacks, which form a convex hull where the nestedly saturated linear feedback resides. This set of auxiliary linear feedbacks is then partitioned into several subsets. The auxiliary linear feedbacks in each of these subsets form a convex sub-hull of the original convex hull. When the value of the nestedly saturated linear feedback falls into a convex sub-hull, it can be expressed as a linear combination of the subset of all the auxiliary feedbacks that form the convex sub-hull. A separate anti-windup gain is designed for each convex sub-hull by using a common quadratic Lyapunov function and is implemented when the value of the nestedly saturated linear feedback falls into this convex sub-hull. Simulation results indicate that such a saturation-based switching anti-windup design has the ability to significantly enlarge the domain of attraction of the closed-loop system.