Analysis of regions of stability for linear systems with saturating inputs through an anti-windup scheme

The purpose of this paper is to study the use of anti-windup gains for obtaining larger regions of stability for linear systems with saturating inputs. Considering that a linear dynamic output feedback has been designed to stabilize the linear system (without saturation), a method is proposed for designing an anti-windup gain that maximizes the estimation of the basin of attraction of the closed-loop system. It is shown that the closed-loop system obtained from the controller plus the anti-windup gain can be locally modeled by a linear system with a deadzone nonlinearity. From this model, stability conditions based on quadratic and Lure type Lyapunov functions are stated. Algorithms based on LMI schemes are proposed for computing both the anti-windup gain and an associated region of stability.