Non-minimal state-space model-based continuous-time model predictive control with constraints

This article proposes a model predictive control scheme based on a non-minimal state-space (NMSS) structure. Such a combination yields a continuous-time state-space model predictive control system that permits hard constraints to be imposed on both plant input and output variables, whilst using NMSS output-feedback without the need for an observer. A comparison between the NMSS and observer-based approaches using Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis shows that the former design is considerably less sensitive to plant-model mismatch than the latter. Through simulation studies, the article also investigates the role of the implementation filter in noise attenuation, disturbance rejection and robustness of the closed-loop predictive control system. The results show that the filter poles become a subset of the closed-loop poles and this provides a straightforward method of tuning the closed-loop performance to achieve a reasonable balance between speed of response, disturbance rejection, measurement noise attenuation and robustness.