EE 141: PRINCIPLES OF

FEEDBACK CONTROL
SPRING 2015
Lecture 1
Introduction and Overviews

Hello!
Instructor: Tae Roh, Ph.D.
Office: TBA
Office hours:
Contact information: roh@seas.ucla.edu
Teaching Assistant:
Min Gao
Christian Vega
Couse Webpages
SEAS CourseWeb: EE 141 Spring 2015
All course materials will be available from these pages

Course syllabus and policies

Lecture note draft (posted weekly)
Assignments and solutions
Scores and grades

Grading Policy (Tentative)

Weekly homework (x 6): 18%
Midterm exam (x 1): 25%
Week 5 or 6; TBA

Final exam (x 1): 40%

Friday, 6/8/2015, 3:00P 6:00P
Exam location: TBD

Matlab simulation / lab report (x1): 15%

Simple exercise of a course material using Matlab (or Octave),

accompanied by a report
Course Evaluation: 2%

Miscellaneous Policies
Academic Integrity
http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/dos/students/integrity/

Late homework will be accepted with 50% penalty

Actual deadline time TBA

Special accommodation will be arranged per instructions from UCLA

OSD and university-wide policies

Course Overview
Systems science
Study of systems
A system is anything that is separated from and interacts with its
surroundings
The separation can be either physical or abstract
The surroundings themselves are systems (e.g. atmosphere)
Interactions are described as inputs and outputs of the system

Systems interact with one another with Signals they generate

Signals can be physical, chemical, thermal, electrical, etc.

System generates signals under a specified set of Control rules

The control rules may be naturally imposed (e.g. laws of Newtonian

motion, laws of thermodynamics, etc.) or artificially engineered (still

within the laws of nature)

Feedback Control
Feedback is a system mechanism in which the system

information (outputs, internal states, etc.) is fed back to

itself
Feedback is added to an existing system for dynamic
control (i.e. time-varying control)
Tracking: keeping up with moving target
Regulation: maintaining a specified state or output of a system

Adaptation and learning: changing the system behavior (hence its

performance) itself based on evaluations

Why Feedback Control?

Allows self-regulation of the system
It is very difficult and costly to know complete behaviors of

a system and disturbances

Correctly implemented feedback control reduces sensitivity of

system behaviors to model inaccuracies and disturbances

Stabilization and modification of system behaviors

Typical Feedback Control

Disturbances/Noises
Process/Plant
External
(Reference) Input

Controller

Actuators

System
System Output

Sensors
The representation above is a typical arrangement; block orders (signal flows) may

change
A Process (or Plant) consists of
Actuators: Act on the system by providing inputs
System: Object to be controlled
Sensors: Provide information to the controller from the system output

A Controller computes decision for the actuator to generate next input to the system
All processes are subject to some kind of disturbances or noises that adds errors or

uncertainties

Case Study: Automobile Steering (1)

Wind/Road conditions (Disturbances/Noises)

Controller

Carburetor +
Steering
mechanism

Sensors

Typical simplified view

Engine +
Vehicle
Dynamics

Case Study: Automobile Steering (2)

Wind/Road conditions (Disturbances/Noises)

Controller

Environments

Vision

Hand
/
Foot

Carburetor +
Steering
mechanism

Sensors

Human in the loop

Engine +
Vehicle
Dynamics

Case Study: Phase Lock Loop (PLL)

A PLL is a circuit that generates a signal that is coherent

(i.e. in-phase) with respect to the input signal

Applications are commonly found in communication
systems and signal measurement devices
Clock recovery
Clock generation
Clock distribution

Clock jitter reduction

Frequency synthesis

Case Study: PLL (cont.)

Error Detector
PD

Ref Clk

Charge
Pump

Loop Filter

VCO

PLL Output

Feedback
Divider
Reference Clock (Ref Clk): Usually a very clean low-frequency tone (typical 10 MHz)
Error Detector consists of a Phase Detector (PD) and Charge Pump
Loop filter: a lowpass filter (LPF) to provide stability and low-noise input to VCO
Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO): output frequency = function of input voltage
Feedback divider: Divides the output frequency by N
PLL output: an in-phase tone with Ref Clk, but has N times the frequency of Ref Clk
Example: 10-MHz Ref Clk w/ N = 2000 20000-MHz (= 20 GHz) PLL output

Case Study: Newtons Method

()

Iterative computation
Convergence is synonymous to stability
Discrete-time feedback system
More on this later
Next term is the current term plus the correction term (plus

finite-precision arithmetic error)

+1

=
+

Kojima, K., Yamamoto, Y., System theory for numerical analysis, Automatica, Vol. 43 (2007), pp. 1156
1164

Case Study: Pancreas

Food intake
Blood sugar level
reference

Pancreas

Glucagon

Insulin

Liver / Body
Cells

Blood sugar level

Pancreas releases glucagon when blood sugar (glucose) level is too

low; glucagon signals the liver to convert glycogen into sugar

Pancreas produces insulin to regulate release of glucagon; insulin
prohibits the release of glucagon to signal the liver to absorb sugar
from the blood
Diabetes is a caused by the metabolic disorder of the pancreas
Type 1 Diabetes: Pancreas no longer produces insulin
Type 2 Diabetes: Pancreas no longer responds to insulins signal

TED-Ed YouTube on Pancreas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dgoeYPoE-0

Case Study: Microphone-Speaker Loop

Amplifier
Speech/Vocal
performance

Microphone
Speaker

Environments
Acoustic
Behavior

Speaker output

Undesirable feedback effect

Similar phenomena happen in RF communication systems
Causes
Nonlinear devices with gain larger than 1
Lack of isolation between speaker output and microphone input

Case Study: Business Process

Many large-scale businesses employ various processes

to monitor and control quality, productivities (project

progress), inventories, etc.
General process architectures are standardized by
various government and civilian trade organizations
The general steps involve
Plan

Execute
Monitor / Evaluate
Control
Apply corrective actions

Many more
Automotive industry
Active/autonomous cruise control
Anti-lock brake system (ABS)/Traction control/Stability control
Fault-tolerant systems
Computing machines
Structural control
Process improvement
Course evaluations
Quality controls
Adaptive (machine learning) system
Economic systems (both macro- and micro-)
Policy making
Psychology
Etc.

Course Outline
Modeling of dynamics system
Stability analysis
Stable feedback controller synthesis

Analysis and design in time-domain

Analysis and design complex-plane
Analysis and design frequency-domain

Discrete-time control system

State-feedback control system