NONLINEAR DIGITAL CONTROL OF CONTINUOUS UNCERTAIN SYSTEMS

This paper examines the problem of nonlinear digital control of a continuous nonlinear system. Due to the prevalence of digital controllers, the problem of controlling continuous systems through the use of digital controls is an important application area. This paper examines the use of two types of backstepping controller; one using a cancellation design to cancel out the nonlinearities and one using a feedback domination design to dominate, rather that cancel, the undesired nonlinearities. The feedback domination design is found to be faster in convergence. The nonlinear controller allows for negating the effects of nonlinear terms not previously accounted for due to the use of a linear digital control of continuous systems. The significance of this result is that little information about the nonlinear system is required to stabilize this system.