Partially Decentralized Controller Design via Model Predictive Control

Abstract An expansion procedure to design partially decentralized controllers via model predictive control is proposed in this paper. Partially decentralized control is a control structure that lies between a fully decentralized structure and a fully centralized one, and has the advantage of achieving comparable performance as a fully centralized controller but with simpler structure. The proposed method follows the expansion method proposed in a previous paper where internal model control (IMC) was used to design controllers for non-square subsystems. The method requires computing the pseudo-inverse of a non-square matrix via pseudo-inverse factors. Instead, the proposed method uses dynamic matrix control (DMC) to design PID controllers for non-square subsystems without using additional factors. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on several chemical examples. Simulation results show that the proposed method is simple and can achieve better performance.