A decentralized model reference adaptive controller for large-scale systems

A decentralized model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) for a class of large-scale systems with unmatched interconnections is developed in this paper. A novel reference model is proposed for the class of large-scale systems considered and a decentralized, full-state feedback adaptive controller is developed for each subsystem of the large-scale system. It is shown that with the proposed decentralized adaptive controller, the states of the subsystems can asymptotically track the desired reference trajectories. To substantiate the performance of the proposed controller, a large web processing line, which mimics most of the features of an industrial web process line, is considered for experimental study. Extensive experiments were conducted with the proposed decentralized adaptive controller and an often used decentralized industrial proportional-integral (PI) controller. A representative sample of the comparative experimental results is shown and discussed.