A General Approach to Robust Controller Analysis and Synthesis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified framework for analyzing and synthesizing robust controllers across various methods, leveraging a realization-stability lemma to simplify derivations and connect existing approaches.

Contribution

It develops a general set of stability conditions and synthesis procedures that unify and extend existing robust control techniques using the realization-stability lemma.

Findings

Unified robust stability conditions applicable to general systems

Simplified derivation of existing robust control methods

Effective demonstration of the unified approach's versatility

Abstract

Robust controller synthesis attracts reviving research interest, driven by the rise of learning-based systems where uncertainty and perturbation are ubiquitous. Facing an uncertain situation, a robustly stabilizing controller should maintain stability while operating under a perturbed system deviating from its nominal specification. There have been numerous results for robust controller synthesis in multiple forms and with various goals, including mu-synthesis, robust primal-dual Youla, robust input-output, and robust system level parameterizations. However, their connections with one another are not clear, and we lack a general approach to robust controller analysis and synthesis. To serve this purpose, we derive robust stability conditions for general systems and formulate the general robust controller synthesis problem. The conditions hinge on the realization-stability lemma, a recent analysis tool that unifies existing controller synthesis methods. Not only can the conditions infer a wide range of existing robust results, but they also lead to easier derivations of new ones. Together, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the conditions and provide a unified approach to robust controller analysis and synthesis.