Disturbance estimation and compensation in linear systems

Discrete-time estimation and compensation are discussed as a solution to the problems encountered when disturbances are present and degrade the performance of continuous automatic control systems. The method described, under a mild set of conditions, allows the designer to locate the closed-loop system poles substantially anywhere and provide disturbance rejection as large as desired by increasing the dimensions of the disturbance estimator. This estimation/compensation scheme results in a gain characteristic, below some frequency (ω_c ), with a slope of q×20 dB/decade. The value of q and ω_c can be chosen by the designer, within the physical limitations of the problem, so that the system error resulting from either deterministic or stochastic disturbances is sufficiently reduced. The method has been investigated for use with known linear, time-invariant systems     

Torque disturbance rejection in high accuracy tracking systems

The possibility of rejecting torque disturbances that degrade the pointing and tracking accuracy of electromechanical pedestals and general two-axis systems used for target acquisition and robotics is discussed. Torque rejection achieved through disturbance estimation and compensation results in a vast improvement in pointing accuracy. For the class of disturbances considered, comparisons of a classical loop configuration of a tracker, modeled as a two-mass system, with the state-space solution indicate that at least an order-of-magnitude improvement in tracking error can be achieved