A Generalized Multi-Loop Controller with Enhanced Robustness and its Design Guideline

Huawei Yuan*, Yuhan Zhang, Wanrong Li, Jinghang Li, Sinan Li, Jianguo Zhu, Shu Yuen Ron Hui

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

29 Downloads (CityUHK Scholars)

Abstract

Feedback control is ubiquitous in engineering applications and is a powerful tool to achieve automatic regulation of the outputs of a system. Existing closed-loop control methods typically employ a single feedback loop to regulate each output. This paper proposes a new generalized multi-loop control structure, which utilizes more than one feedback loops to control one output. The control performance of an existing single-loop controller can be boosted by closing extra feedback loops outside the original loop. The main advantage of the multi-loop structure is enhanced robustness without necessarily sacrificing the stability and dynamics of the original control system. The proposed multi-loop structure is a general control technique that can potentially be combined with any existing control methods. A straightforward design guideline for minimum-phase systems is provided to implement the multi-loop controller and determine the control parameters. The proposed idea is illustrated with a power-factor-correction circuit and is validated in simulation and experiments.

© 2025 The Authors.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)9289-9300
JournalIEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
Volume40
Issue number7
Online published6 Mar 2025
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2025

Funding

This work was supported by the CityU Power Electronics Research and International Collaboration Fund under Grant 9380173. Open Access made possible with partial support from the Open Access Publishing Fund of the City University of Hong Kong.

Research Keywords

  • additional feedback loops
  • disturbance rejection
  • double-loop
  • multi-loop
  • robust control
  • triple-loop

Publisher's Copyright Statement

  • This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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