1.2 Control of Multivariable Processes 5
understood and developed, compared with the single variable case and actual need for
industrial applications. Better theory and design have to be established for MIMO-PID
control to reach the same maturity and popularity as the single variable case. In partic-
ular, it is noted that
(i) Unlike the SISO process, loop interactions have to be investigated carefully for
MIMO processes. Therefore, loop pairing can have a heavy effect on the perfor-
mance of the closed-loop system. Usually, relative gain array (RGA) method is
used to give a loop pairing criterion, but sometimes, such a criterion can also lead
to bad performance. Hence, new criterion for loop pairing to improve the perfor-
mance of MIMO processes is needed.
(ii) For the single variable case, the gain range for P-term for closed-loop stability can
be easily determined from the Nyquest test. In order to have a very first control
of a given multivariable process, one always wishes to know the gain range of
P control for stability. Unfortunately, there is no result in the literature for this
simplest controller. In general, in order to achieve closed-loop stabilization and
tracking, it is necessary to find a set of parameters of a multi-loop PID controller
for any application and desirable to find the whole parameter space of the controller
for advanced applications such as optimization.
(iii) There are a huge number of SISO-PID controller designs. Many of them are well
known and widely utilized in practice. This is not the case for the multivariable
case. There are a number of design methods for multivariable PID controllers in
the literature as mentioned above. Usually, they are ad hoc in nature. Most of
them are based on the following two assumptions: 1) the process can be decoupled
into single variable systems; and/or 2) the process can be described by first-order
plus time delay model. However, the process may be badly coupled and/or cannot
be decoupled well due to simplicity of PID structure. A given process may not
be well approximated by first-order plus time delay model. Some methods may
not guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system. Thus, a unifying framework
for analysis and design of multivariable PID control system applicable to general
multivariable processes (either simple or complex) would be welcome.
(iv) For the single variable case, frequency domain stability margins such as gain and
phase margins are very popular, and used for performance assessment, design
specifications and robustness measure of PID control systems. There are some
attempts to define multivariable system stability margins in frequency domain, but
none of them is well known. One may look for better definitions which are mean-
ingful, useful and easily checkable with clear link to the single variable case. They
can then be used as performance assessment, design specifications and robustness
measure of multivariable PID control systems and may lead to a large branch of
tuning rules similar to the single variable case.
(v) With popularity of SISO-PID auto-tuning in commercial control systems and in-
dustrial applications, it is natural to do the same for MIMO-PID controllers. This
will require simple yet effective multivariable system identification methods. Our
existing works with relay and step tests using the Fast Fourier transform (FFT)
are a good starting point. But they need to be further developed to eliminate the
limitations such as the common frequency limit cycle with relay feedback and