Proportional-Integral Observer in Robust Control, Fault Detection, and Decentralized Control of Dynamic Systems

This chapter initially reviews observer theory as it was developed over the past few decades. The state observer and its order reduction including functional observer in connection to state feedback control design are briefly discussed. The robustness of observer-based controller design is also explored. The loss of robustness due to the inclusion of observer in optimal linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and its recovery procedure (LTR) are summarized. The subsequent development of new observer structures such as disturbance observer (DO), unknown input observer (UIO), and proportional-integral observer (PIO) for disturbance estimation and fault detection is highlighted. Throughout the chapter we concentrate mainly on important advantages of PI-observer. Finally, we consider the problem of designing a decentralized PI observer with prescribed degree of convergence for a set of interconnected systems. Under the assumption of linear interactions, we provide a direct design procedure for the PI observer which can effectively be used in disturbance estimation and observer-based control design enhancing the robustness properties. In this connection we also extend the results to the case of designing controllers that attenuate the disturbance while preserving the stability. It is shown that the design can be formulated in terms of LMI which efficiently solve the problem.