Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
In this paper a direct digital control law algorithm is proposed which in addition to providing tight non-interacting tracking behaviour and excellent disturbance-rejection characteristics, provides for the compensation of finite-time delays in implementation. The control-law algorithm is defined and system stability is proved in the case of multi-input multi-output linear systems. The theory is synthetic and leads directly to the determination of the appropriate controller matrices.
The theory is illustrated by the presentation of simulation results in which the aircraft is represented by an analogue computer and the digital control system is implemented on a microprocessor. In the simulation study the controller is required to effect fuselage pitch pointing and vertical translation manoeuvres for the analogue computer representation of the YF-16 aircraft. It is shown that tight non-interacting control is achievable even when the control implemented is delayed by 0·1 seconds.