Digital Control Systems

1 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour

 What is Control Engineering?

Control is the process of causing a system

variable to conform to some desired value,
called a reference value .
A control system is a system in which a
desired effect (or objective) is achieved by
operating on the various inputs to the
plant until the output, which is a measure
of the desired effect, falls within in an
acceptable range of values.
2 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour
 What is Control Engineering?
(cont.)

Any engineering/math problem associated

with constraining or minimizing the
difference (error) between desired output
yd or system output w.r.t. some decision
With this general sense, most of system
engineering problems fall within the scope
of control engineering!!

3 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour

 Continuous Control Systems

The continuous controllers are built using

analog electronics such as resistor,
capacitors, and operational amplifiers.

4 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour

 Digital Control Systems

The digital controllers are built using digital

computers (or microprocessors) with the
necessary input/output hardware to
implement the controllers.

5 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour

 Flexibility
Easy to implement complex/nonlinear
algorithms
Easy to change controllers without
rewiring/hardware redesign
Possible to change plants without
Why use digital
rewiring/hardware computers
redesign
for control?
Robustness
Digital circuits are less sensitive to noise
Digital filter coefficients are more accurate

6 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour

 Must we use digital computers
forAnswer
control?
: NO! because of the following reasons:
Cost:
Components of analog OPA circuits are often
cheaper than digital controllers (DSP+AD/DA)
Speed:
Some systems such as optical communications need
very high (e.g. >10MHz) sampling rate
High speed DSP+AD/DA are usually quite expensive
Size:
Circuit area with analog controllers can be smaller
when there are many (e.g. >1000) input/output
channels

7 09/04/17 Dr. Ali S. Al-Dmour