MPC for Discrete-Event Systems with Soft and Hard Synchronisation Constraints

Reference

B. De Schutter and T. J. J. van den Boom, "MPC for discrete-event systems with soft and hard synchronisation constraints," International Journal of Control, vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 82-94, Jan. 2003.

Abstract

Discrete-event systems with only synchronisation and no concurrency, also known as timed event graphs or (max,+)-linear systems, have been studied by several authors. The synchronisation constraints that arise in these discrete-event systems are hard, i.e., they cannot be broken under any circumstance. In this paper we consider a more extended class of discrete-event systems with both hard and soft synchronisation constraints, i.e., if necessary, some synchronisation conditions may be broken, but then a penalty is incurred. We show how the model predictive control (MPC) framework, which is a very popular controller design method in the process industry, can be extended to this class of discrete-event systems. In general, the MPC control design problem for discrete-event systems with soft and hard synchronisation constraints leads to a nonlinear non-convex optimisation problem. We show that the optimal MPC strategy can also be computed using an extended linear complementarity problem.

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BibTeX

@article{DeSvan:01-01,
   author  = {De Schutter, Bart and van den Boom, Ton J. J.},
   title   = {{MPC} for Discrete-Event Systems with Soft and Hard
              Synchronisation Constraints},
   journal = {International Journal of Control},
   volume  = {76},
   number  = {1},
   pages   = {82--94},
   month   = jan,
   year    = {2003}
   }


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