IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO.

1, JANUARY 2003 91

Design of Matching Circuit Controllers for Radio-Frequency Heating

Christopher J. Cottee and Stephen R. Duncan

Abstract—Electromagnetic energy in the microwave and radio-

frequency (RF) portions of the spectrum can be used to heat or
defrost (thaw) foodstuffs. This paper considers a fixed frequency
RF oven, where a matching circuit is used to ensure that the com-
bined impedance of the oven and the food (the load) matches the
impedance of the generator and the transmission line. A controller
measures the reflected RF signal and adjusts the settings of com-
ponents in the matching circuit. The system is highly nonlinear
and there are significant sources of uncertainty in the model of the
process. A variable structure controller is designed and its stability
is examined in the presence of uncertainties due to stray compo-
nents. The switching lines are defined in terms of the real and imag-
inary parts of the reflected signal, which avoids the need to estimate
the states. Conditions are derived for maintaining stability in the
region close to the matching point. The performance of the con-
troller is illustrated by results from an implementation on a proto-
type commercial RF oven.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic heating, impedance matching,
nonlinear systems, stability, variable structure systems.

I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Schematic front view of RF oven with components of matching circuit.

D EFROSTING (or thawing) of frozen foodstuffs is an

important process in the food industry. Conventional
defrosting takes place over periods of up to 48 h in a temper-
ature controlled room. The process cannot be carried out any
faster because the latent heat of melting is large and the surface
temperature of the food must not exceed a given value (typi-
cally 5 C) in order to comply with hygiene regulations. As a
result, a large amount of heat must be transferred across a small
temperature gradient, resulting in a long processing time. The
lengthy defrosting may degrade the quality of the food through
drip loss and surface drying, as well as introducing a long delay
in the overall processing of the food which makes it difficult
for the manufacturer to respond rapidly to a changing demand
for the product. By contrast, electromagnetic heating methods
such as microwave and radio-frequency (RF) heating can
reduce the defrosting time to one hour. The difference between
microwave and RF heating is that the operating frequency of
the microwave radiation is in the range 433 MHz to 40 GHz,
which is much higher than the frequency used in RF heating.
This means that the dimensions of the objects being heated
are usually much bigger than the wavelength of the microwave
heating and it is necessary to move the object to ensure even
heating. Also, in microwave heating, the “skin depth” of the
material of the material may be less than the dimensions of
the load, particularly when defrosting large objects such as
Manuscript received August 9, 2000; revised April 17, 2002. Manuscript re-
ceived in final form August 12, 2002. Recommended by Associate Editor S.
Nair. This work was supported by EA Technology Limited, under a UK DTI
Postgraduate Training Partnership.
C. J. Cottee is with EA Technology Limited, Chester CH1 6ES, U.K.
S. R. Duncan is with the Department of Engineering Science, University of
Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PJ, U.K.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2002.806447
1063-6536/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
frozen carcasses, so that as in conventional methods, the rate
of defrosting is determined by the limit on the heating of the
surface. By contrast, the internationally agreed frequencies for
RF heating are 13.56 MHz 0.05% and 27.12 MHz 0.6%,
so the corresponding skin depth is much larger. As a result,
although microwave defrosting is common for domestic use,
in the food industry, where the dimensions of the objects to be
defrosted tend to be larger, RF heating is often used.
In conventional RF heating, the generator is a self excited
oscillator whose resonant frequency is determined by a reso-
nant “tank circuit” [1]. The object to be defrosted (referred to
as the load) is placed between two applicator plates, which are
inductively coupled to the tank circuit. This means that the ap-
plicator and load form part of the generator’s oscillator circuit.
When using RF heating for defrosting, the impedance of the
load changes dramatically across the phase change as the ob-
ject melts. If the impedance of the load changes, then this alters
the resonant frequency and quality factor the circuit, which in
turn, changes the power transfer to the load [2], [3]. The change
in load impedance may also move the operating frequency of
the circuit outside the agreed limits, which can result in inter-
ference with radio communications.
In this paper, a fixed frequency system is used instead of a
conventional tank circuit generator and Fig. 1 shows a schematic
front view of the prototype commercial oven used [4]. The load
is placed between two metal plates and the lower plate, which
is connected to ground, is attached to a jack so that the height
of the object can be adjusted. The power is supplied to the oven
via a 50- coaxial cable from the generator, which amplifies the
output of a crystal driven oscillator [5], [6]. Because the oscil-
lator is independent of the load, this ensures that the operating
92 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003
Fig. 2. Arrangement of generator, transmission line, matching circuit, and
load.
frequency remains within the required limits, which in this case
are 27.12 MHz 0.6%.
The coaxial cable acts as a transmission line from the gener-
ator to the oven (Fig. 2) and the circuit can be analyzed using
transmission line theory. The transmission line will be treated as
lossless and uniform [7] and the characteristic impedance at any
point along the line will be denoted by . Traveling waves prop-
agate in both directions along the line and if a wave encounters
a change in impedance (such as a load) some of that wave will
be reflected back along the transmission line. In fixed frequency
systems, the impedance of the generator is designed to be 50
, so that it matches the impedance of the coaxial cable. In order
to avoid reflection of power from the load, it is necessary to in-
clude a matching circuit (as shown in Fig. 2) to make the combined
impedance of load, oven, and matching circuit equal to 50 . This
allows the generator to be run efficiently at high power.
As shown in Fig. 2, the matching circuit used in this study con-
sists of an inductor, formed from a coiled copper strap, and two
variable capacitors whose settings can be changed using motor
drives. The paper describes a control system that will automati-
cally adjust the settings of the variable capacitors in the matching
circuit to regulate the reflected power in the transmission line to
zero. In order to implement the controller, a detector circuit is used
to provide a voltages that are proportional to the real and imagi-
nary parts of the signal reflected back from load, although there is
considerable uncertainty in the measurements from the detector
when the magnitude of the reflected signal is large [4]. The system
is highly nonlinear, primarily as a result of the nonlinear relation-
ship between the settings of the capacitors and impedance of the
matching circuit. In addition to the uncertainty in the measure-
ments from the detector, there is also a significant level of uncer-
tainty in the model of the matching circuit that is used as the basis
of the control design. This is due to the existence of the stray com-
ponents that can produce large differences between the model of
matching circuit and reality. Finally, there are constraints on the
range of settings for the variable capacitors that can be achieved
and the speed at which they can be changed. It is in the context of
an uncertain, nonlinear system operating within constraints, that
the controller must be designed.
The use of matching circuits is common in radio communi-
cations for matching amplifier resistances to antennas and to
a lesser extent, in microwave engineering [8]–[10]. At radio
frequencies, matching circuits take the form of ladder networks
of (ideally) lossless reactances [11]. The need for automatic
matching circuits for fixed-frequency RF heating has been
identified in [1], [5], [6], and [12] and possible circuit designs
are discussed in [12] and [13]. The operating ranges of various
matching circuits are analyzed in [11] and [12]. The RF systems
described in [5], [6], and [14] use matching circuits, but no
details of the control are presented. Although the primary
application of RF heating considered here is the defrosting of
frozen foodstuffs, RF heating is also used extensively in plastics
welding, rubber curing and drying processes for textiles, paper,
fiberglass, and coatings [1], [15].
In Section II, the nature of the control problem is examined
and the key features of the nonlinearity and uncertainty are
discussed in more detail. Then the dynamics of the nom-
inal matching circuit model are analyzed and a simplified
state-space formulation is developed. On the basis of the state
space model, a switching, “variable structure,” approach is de-
signed because of its simplicity and robustness, as described in
Section III. The stability of the switching controller is analyzed
in the following section. The matched position is shown to be a
global equilibrium for the switching laws chosen. In Section IV,
the effect of stray components on stability is then analyzed. A
general form for the matching circuit with stray components
is developed and then constrained by physical considerations.
With this model of the stray components the local stability
of the matched position is proven and the limits on global
stability are discussed. In Section V, the implementation of the
controller is discussed and examples of load tuning plotted.
II. MODELING THE SYSTEM
First, the dynamic behavior of the nominal matching circuit
model (i.e., without any stray components) will be examined.
The inputs to the controller are the two voltages from the de-
tector proportional to the real and imaginary parts of the reflec-
tion coefficient and the outputs are speeds of the motors used to
drive the variable capacitors. Since positions of the capacitors
can be related to their capacitance by a calibration curve, the
analysis will be based on impedance (or admittance) values. It
is also convenient to express the input to the controller in terms
of the input impedance of the matching circuit, which is directly
related to the real and imaginary parts of the reflected signal.
A. Input–Output Model
Fig. 2 shows the components in the nominal model of the
matching circuit. If denotes the impedance of the matching
circuit, oven and load then the expression for can be simpli-
fied by defining as the admittance of the load and
inductor in series, as the impedance of capacitor , and
as the admittance of capacitor .
It is also convenient to express the input impedance in
terms of its real and imaginary parts, so that
(1)
All of the impedances and admittances can be normalized rel-
ative to the matched impedance of the generator 50 . Thus
the normalized units of impedance are 50 and the nor-
malized units of admittance are /50. This means that the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003 93

normalized matched impedance is . The variable capaci-

tors in the matching circuit have ranges pF and
pF and the corresponding ranges on and ,
in terms of the normalized units, are

(2)
(3)

The relationship between the load impedance and and is

given by

(4) Fig. 3. Plot of phase space showing possible trajectories of y as  and  are
changed.

Differentiating this to obtain the change of with respect to

time gives varied. Straightforward manipulation of (7) leads to

(10)

(5) indicating that the possible values of and lie on a circle

of radius 1/2 , centered on the point , as shown
Because the dynamics in a heating process have time constants in Fig. 3. The radius of the circle is determined by the load
of the order of hundreds of seconds whereas and can be admittance, since it is a constant conductance circle (the real part
moved over their full range in a few seconds, the load admit- of the load admittance is not changed by ). Because , the
tance, , changes slowly compared to the changes in and . center of the circle lies below the line and the effect of
As a result, the control problem can be considered as adjusting decreasing is to move the center of the circle down from the
and to bring to the desired value (i.e., ) and then real axis. Increasing (while keeping fixed) moves the input
to maintain it at this value in the presence of slowly varying impedance around the circle. However, only a finite portion of
changes in . the circle can be reached because has a finite range. When
, the real part of the input impedance is zero (i.e., at
B. State-Space Model the point where the circle touches the imaginary axis) and when
A state-space formulation of the system to be constructed by , the input impedance is .
defining the state and the output as the real and This diagram shows three of the limits on the range of load
imaginary parts of , so that . If and impedances that can be matched.
denote the rates of change of and , respectively, then the state 1) The (normalized) real part of the load impedance cannot
equations are exceed one. If , then would have to be negative to
match the load, since the starting point on the circle would
(6) be to the right of the matched position.
2) The imaginary part of the load impedance, , must be
greater than zero, otherwise would again have to be neg-
(7) ative in order to reach the top part of the circle.
3) The normalized conductance, , of the load must be less than
one. If it were not, the circle would intersect the real axis to
where the expression for is obtained by combining (1) and (4). the left of the matching point, , irrespective of the
The dynamics of the system are simple but the output relation- value of .
ship is nonlinear and uncertain. The input–output description of It is assumed that the system has been set up to satisfy these
the system can be found by differentiating or expanding (5) criteria, so that matching can be achieved.
Since the ranges of and are known, it useful to charac-
terize the load impedances in terms of the matched settings of
and . This can be done by solving (7) when the load is matched,
(8)
so that , giving

(11)
which can be simplified using (7)
(12)
(9)
where and denote the matched settings. These equations
The global behavior of the matching circuit can be understood show that there are two solutions for the matching problem, cor-
by plotting the trajectories of in phase space as and are responding to being positive or negative. However, since
94 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

(and hence, ) lies in the range given in (2), only one possible where and are the speeds chosen for and . For the
solution can be achieved. line, a Lyapunov function exists if

C. Linearized Model
When the load is close to being matched, is approximately (16)
, where is the imaginary component of the impedance, which is satisfied if
which is taken to be small (in particular, small compared to ).
Using this in the input output expression in (8) gives the fol- (17)
lowing model for the linearized dynamics near matching:
A similar condition applies for the switching line. The do-
main over which this condition holds defines the domain of at-
(13)
traction of the switching line. For the matched settings to be an
equilibrium of the system it is sufficient that one sliding mode
Even for the linearized system, there is a wide variation in the
exists and that along that line, the equilibrium is attractive. For
gains near matching for different loads since can vary between this it is necessary that the two lines intersect only at the matched
0.5 and 23. However, it can be seen that affects only the point and that one of them is a sliding mode.
imaginary part of the load (and always has a positive gain), while It is easier to identify suitable switching lines in the output
the effect of on the real part of the input impedance always
space (i.e., in terms of and ) and then to use (7) to ex-
has a positive gain. press the lines in terms of and . From Fig. 3, if , then
should be increased, so the switching line for is given by
III. CONTROLLER DESIGN
(18)
We summarize the features of the system as follows.
• Gains vary strongly with both load value and the state of the Similarly, when the input impedance lies on the upper half
system. of the circle, so that , should be increased for
• Output mapping is two to one, it is only the constraints on and decreased for . However, when lies in
the capacitor values which make it effectively one to one. the lower half of the circle (i.e., when ), decreasing
• Load is slowly varying thus the task of the controller is to actually moves in the wrong direction when .
identify the settings that which match the load and move the This suggests the following possible switching line for :
capacitors to those settings as quickly as possible. for
Essentially, the regulation problem has two aspects relating (19)
for .
to the two sources of nonlinearity. The first is to move the ca-
pacitors from any particular setting to a matched position for a The difficulty with the second switching line is that it requires
given load. The second is to track the changes in load impedance an estimate of one of the states and small errors in the estimate
once the controller is matched. By assuming that the load vari- can lead to unstable regions for the matching circuit control. For
ations are slow, the first problem can be seen to encompass the practical systems, a switching line that sometimes send in the
second. A number of approaches to the control problem were wrong direction but which will produce a stable equilibrium and
considered, including adaptive linear control and model inver- be less sensitive to matching circuit errors is preferable. One
sion, but none of these approaches was sufficiently robust to the possible switching line can be found by considering , the
uncertainties in the system [4]. However, a switching controller upper limit (i.e., least negative value) that can take, so that
[16], [17] was found to be suitable. becomes
A surface in the state space defined by , for
(20)
is a sliding mode [16] if the Lyapunov function for
exists and . Provided that a sliding mode exists, can be calculated from the range of allowable values for
then any trajectory in phase space can be described as having , which avoids the need to estimate the state [4].
two modes: the reaching mode and the sliding mode [16]. The Given that the detector produces voltages that are propor-
reaching mode is the part of the trajectory from the starting posi- tional to the real and imaginary parts of the reflected signal, to
tion until the trajectory intersects the switching surface. During implement the controller it is necessary to convert the expres-
the sliding mode, the trajectory is constrained to stay on the sions for the switching lines, which are given in terms of
switching surface and the dynamics of the system are deter- and , to corresponding expressions in terms of the measured
mined by . It is the robustness of the behavior during values. This can be done by writing the reflection coefficient in
the sliding mode to uncertainties in system dynamics which the form
makes this form of controller attractive for this system.
For the matching circuit, there are two switching lines, (21)
and , which determine and , the rates of change of
and (22)
(14) From (18), it can be seen that the switching line can be im-
(15) plemented by switching the direction of movement for the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003 95

capacitor according to the sign of the voltage proportional to
the imaginary part of the reflected signal. The implementation
of the switching line for determining the movement of the
capacitor is less straightforward. In principle, it would be pos-
sible to use the signals from the detector in (22) to deduce
and and then to use these values to determine the line.
However, this requires an accurate calibration of the detector
signals and it was not possible to produce a reliable calibration
over the whole range of operation [4]. As a result, the modified
switching line
(23)
was used, so that the direction of movement of the capacitor
depended upon the sign of the real part of the reflected signal. In
the limit , the switching on the modified line occurs at
the same point as on the optimal line given in (19). Although the
resulting control does not produce the global stability achieved
by the switching lines in (19), it will have the same local sta-
bility properties as the ideal controller in the region close to the
matching point.
Introduce a new variable, , such that
(30)
then
(31)
where
(32)
Stable sliding modes will exist for the linearized system pro-
vided that is positive definite [17]. From the definition of ,
in (2), is always negative, so a stable sliding mode exists on
the second switching line for all choices of . For the first
switching line, a stable sliding mode will occur provided that
is set sufficiently large. Thus, close to the equilibrium point, the
stability of the system depends solely upon the rates of change
of the positions of the capacitors and is independent of the ad-
mittance of the load.

A. Local Stability B. Global Stability

By considering the stability of the linearized system around The switching controller generates switching lines in the
the matching point the ability of the controller to track changes input impedance space which approximately map on to the
in load impedance can be examined. Given that the matching optimal switching lines in and space, the approximation
point is and , it is convenient to shift the origin coming from the use of (23) instead of (19) for the switching
of the output space by defining , so that line. The main difficulty is that the mapping from space
to , space is “one-to-two.” As a result, the line
(24) in space maps onto the optimal switching line for in
and space, but it also maps onto a higher value of , which
would move the system into an unstable region. However, the
The switching lines are
operating range of the and is finite and this effectively
introduces four more switching lines along the boundaries
determined by (2) and (3). This is because an unstable trajec-
(25) tory moving out of the range of and will reach one of the
boundaries, and thereafter it will be constrained to move along
that boundary. For the controller to be unstable, the trajectory
In the region of the matching point, and and must end up in one of the corners. Thus, if the corners are not
the switching lines can be considered as approximately straight, attractive the controller cannot be unstable.
so that These arguments are best illustrated graphically with phase
plots, which show the two-dimensional space of possible ca-
(26) pacitor values (recall that the impedance of is and that
the admittance of is ) with the switching lines and the re-
Using these switching lines, the inputs (i.e., the rate of change sulting rates of change of the capacitor settings. The maximum
of and ), are speed for is twice that for . The switching lines are de-
fined in (18) and (20), and can be mapped onto lines in and
space using (7), to give
(27)
(33)
The factor of 1/2 can be dropped as it does not affect the value
of the sign function.
Since , then from (13) (34)

(28) These expressions for and can be converted to corre-

sponding expressions for and using
and . Given that in the absence of stray
(29)
components the matched input impedance is , the
96 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Fig. 4. Plot of switching lines and velocities at points in the phase space expressed in terms of C and C . Matching is achieved when C = 125 pF and
C = 125 pF.

Fig. 5. Plot of switching lines and velocities at points in the phase space expressed in terms of C and C . Matching is achieved when C = 12:5 pF and
C = 125 pF.

values of and at the matching point, can be related to the
real and imaginary parts of the load admittance by
(35)
(36)
Fig. 4 shows the phase plane diagram for the case where the
matched capacitor settings are both 125 pF. The arrows indicate
the velocities of the states. From the diagram it can be seen that
the equilibrium is globally stable and that the switching lines
are (locally) a good approximation to the ideal. Also, near the
equilibrium point, both lines form sliding modes. In Fig. 5, the
matched setting of capacitor has been reduced to 12.5 pF,
which makes the region close to matching less stable, although
global asymptotic stability is maintained.
IV. ROBUSTNESS TO MODEL ERRORS
One of the reasons for using the switching controller the
matching circuit was the possibility of model errors. In prin-
ciple, stray components (impedances) can occur at any point in
the matching network. However, it can be shown [4], that the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003 97

The local stability analysis proceeds as before but with the

switching lines changed by a rotation matrix

(43)

leading to

(44)
Fig. 6. Simplified matching circuit model with stray component.
Transforming the coordinates from to using
only component that can affect the stability is the stray admit-
tance, , shown in Fig. 6. Any other components simply bias (45)
the range of the variable capacitors. The equation for the input
impedance of the matching circuit with this stray component is gives

(37) (46)

where
where
(47)
(38)

The control of this system can be regarded as the control of

the impedance, with the measured output distorted by the (48)
stray admittance, . The problem of analyzing the stability of
the matching circuit control can thus be reduced to analyzing Since
the nominal model but with the matching point shifted and the
(49)
switching lines distorted.
the controller is stable if . Since , this condition
A. Local Stability of the Perturbed System will be satisfied, unless is negative and its magnitude is large
The stability of the controller near the matching point with relative to . This is physically implausible, as it would require
stray components can be considered by calculating the effects the stray component to be an inductance term in parallel with
of the stray components on the switching lines in space and the load, so in practice, the perturbed controller will be locally
the effect the shift of the matching point has on . The mapping stable for all matching settings. Sliding modes will exist on the
from to is conformal, so the angle between the switching switching lines if
lines at the matching point will be the same in both spaces and
(50)
the effect of the transformation (near the matching point) is to
rotate the switching lines. The angle of the rotation can be found (51)
by calculating the gradient at the matching point A sliding mode can be guaranteed on the first switching line if
is made sufficiently large relative to . However, it is possible
(39) that the second switching line might not be attractive for large
values of if is negative. As before, this is unlikely to
giving a rotation angle occur in practice as it requires a stray parallel inductor.

(40) B. Global Stability

The matched position in space is given by
(41)
Close to the matching point, the input–output equation becomes
(42)
Since the matched value of can be any value within the range
determined by the limits of the variable capacitor , the effect
of the stray admittance is simply to shift the ranges slightly.
The effect of including the stray component into the net-
work is to distort both of the switching lines. This means that
for some loads, global stability is lost, since for loads which are
matched with large and small, it is possible for the “starting
position” when and are at their smallest values, is on the
wrong side of both switching lines. As a result, the controller
will try to increase above its maximum and to reduce
below its minimum. The phase plot for this situation is shown in
Fig. 7 and it can be seen that the matched position is not a global
equilibrium, since the top left corner of the range has become an
attractive node. The effect of the stray has been exaggerated by
using an unusually large stray admittance and unequal scaling
98 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003
Fig. 7. Plot of switching lines and velocities at points in the phase space expressed in terms of C and C , when a stray admittance of 0.25
is present. The
nominal matched settings for the capacitors are C = 10 pF and C = 25 pF.
on the axes in order to make the plot clearer. For the oven used
in this study, it is possible for global stability to be lost, for a
small range of nominal matching conditions (when the matched
settings of both and were at the low end of their range)
and when the stray component had a large admittance [4]. It is
possible to use the mapping from to in (37) to determine
the limiting values of and that will maintain global stability
for a given stray impedance, . In practice, there is only a very
small region of the phase space for which global stability is lost,
even when the stray admittance is large [4] and global stability
can be achieved by initializing the system with both capacitors
at the low end of their ranges. From Fig. 7, it can be seen that this
ensures that the system converges the required stable position.
If the stray admittance were measured and incorporated into the
controller by recalculating the switching lines, then global sta-
bility could be maintained throughout the phase space.
V. IMPLEMENTATION
The switching controller designed in the previous sections was
implemented on a prototype commercial RF oven shown in Fig. 1.
The internal dimensions of the oven are 400 500 510 mm and
it is double skinned for insulation. The inductor, which forms part
of the matching circuit is made from coiled copper strap 30-mm
wide by 1-mm thick. Power is provided by an 50- RF generator
running at 27.12 MHz, which is rated at 1 kW, although the gen-
erator automatically restricts the forward power of the generator
if the reflected power exceeds 75 W. The variable capacitors in
the matching circuit are moved by stepper motors which have 200
steps per turn and a maximum speed of 7.5 rad/s. The voltages
from the detector were sampled at 50 Hz by an A/D board in a PC,
which generated the pulse signals for driving the stepper motors.
Further details of the oven are described in [4].
Since the controller was to be implemented using a dis-
crete-time algorithm rather than analog electronics, the
possibility existed for chattering [17]. This is because infinitely
fast switching is not possible. To remove the oscillations about
the switching surface the control implemented took the form of
a high gain with saturation. Since steppers drives were being
used and it is not possible to move a fraction of a step during
a sampling interval, there was effectively a deadband on the
signal as well.
Experience with using the controller showed that once
matching had been achieved, the impedance of the load
changed slowly as the object was heated and that the matching
circuit tracked the change well. The results presented here
cover the more interesting problem of bringing the system from
an initial (unknown) state to the matched position. Under these
circumstances, the local stability analysis no longer applies.
Six different initial load impedances were created by adjusting
the separation between the actuator plates when a load was
inserted into the oven. The real and imaginary parts of the
reflected signal were recorded every 10 ms as the matching
circuit was controller automatically and the experiment was
repeated three times for each starting position [4]. Fig. 8 shows
a plot of the normalized magnitude of the reflected signal,
plotted against time, for each of the runs. It is noticeable that in
each of the runs from a given starting condition, the trajectories
are very similar. Closer examination of the movement of the
variable capacitors showed that the capacitor did not start to
move until the capacitor had virtually reached the matched
position. This is partly due to the nonideal switching line,
and partly a result of stray admittance in parallel with [4].
It is noticeable that the response of the system is much slower
for one set of initial conditions. This is due to the presence
of stray components which make the initial load impedance
appear close to the switching line and the finite gain on
the speed of movement only changes the settings of slowly
in the early stages of the trajectory.
Fig. 9 plots the real and imaginary parts of the normalized
reflected signal for each of the runs associated with two dif-
ferent initial conditions. For both sets of initial conditions, the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003
Fig. 8. Plot of magnitude of 0 against time (seconds) during matching for six different initial conditions. The results of three runs are shown for each initial
condition.
Fig. 9. Plot of real and imaginary parts of 0 (after normalization) during
matching for two different initial conditions (one set of initial conditions is
represented by the solid line and the other by the dashed line). The results of
three runs are shown for each initial condition.
trajectories start by following circles, which correspond to lines
of constant reactance, indicating that the trajectories are not
sliding modes. This is because the gain on the movement of
is large and this drives the system to the switching line,
which lies along the real axis, rather than being attracted to the
switching line. The speed of movement of the capac-
itor is also apparent from the “jerky” trace for the trajectories
described by the dashed line, where the very rapid change in
means that only a few samples were recorded in this portion
of the trajectory. Increasing the gain for the capacitor did
99
induce sliding on the switching line, although for the
system used in this study, the high gain introduced errors in the
positioning of the stepper motor.
VI. CONCLUSION
A control system for a matching circuit in a fixed frequency
RF oven has been developed, analyzed, and implemented. There
was considerable uncertainty in the system and the control de-
sign has taken account of this uncertainty. The controller has
been proven to be locally stable for all loads and global stability
is indicated by phase plots. The robustness of the controller to
stray components in the matching circuit has been calculated
showing that local stability is maintained for a wide range of
stray components. Although in principle, global stability can be
lost for a small range of loads when there is a large stray ad-
mittance in the system, in practice, stability can be maintained
by initializing the system with both capacitors at the low end of
their ranges. The control law has been implemented and shown
to produce matching for a range of loads.
The matching circuit used in this study was based upon a
simple -network, but this is not the only possible configura-
tion for impedance matching [12]. Other networks are possible
and it can be shown that the same form of controller used in
this matching circuit is appropriate for these other networks [4].
Circuits with more than two variable components are possible
and have some advantages. The extra degrees of freedom can
be used to increase the matching range or to reduce the cur-
rents and voltages within the circuit. It is not possible to produce
switching lines for the third (or higher) variable component be-
cause there is no consistent mapping from the third variable to
the real and imaginary parts of . However a possible control
structure would be to use two of the variable components for
matching and the third could be varied on a much slower time
scale, tracking changes in the load.
100 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank A. Rowley and S. Smith for their
advice and assistance during this work.
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