Modified active disturbance rejection control for time-delay systems

Industrial processes are typically nonlinear, time-varying and uncertain, to which active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) has been shown to be an effective solution. The control design becomes even more challenging in the presence of time delay. In this paper, a novel modification of ADRC is proposed so that good disturbance rejection is achieved while maintaining system stability. The proposed design is shown to be more effective than the standard ADRC design for time-delay systems and is also a unified solution for stable, critical stable and unstable systems with time delay. Simulation and test results show the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed design. Linear matrix inequality (LMI) based stability analysis is provided as well. © 2013 ISA.