Design of robust structurally constrained controllers for MIMO plants with time-delays

The structurally constrained controller design problem for linear time invariant neutral and retarded time-delay systems (TDS) is considered in this paper. The closed-loop system of the plant and structurally constrained controller is modelled by a system of delay differential algebraic equations (DDAEs). A robust controller design approach using the existing spectrum based stabilisation and the H-infinity norm optimisation of DDAEs has been proposed. A MATLAB based tool has been made available to realise this approach. This tool allows the designer to select the sub-controller input-output interactions and fix their orders. The results obtained while stabilising and optimising two TDS using structurally constrained (decentralised and overlapping) controllers have been presented in this paper.