Introduction

Abstract

Robustness is of crucial importance in control-system design because real engineering systems are vulnerable to external disturbance and measurement noise and there are always differences between mathematical models used for design and for the actual system. Despite the mature theory and availability of software packages, commercial or licensed freeware, many people have experienced difficulties in solving industrial control-systems design problems with these H͚ and related methods, due to the complex mathematics of the advanced approaches and numerous presentations of formulas as well as adequate translations of industrial design into relevant configurations. This book aims at bridging the gap between the theory and applications. By sharing the experiences in industrial case studies with minimum exposure to the theory and formulas, the authors hope readers will obtain insight into robust industrial control-system designs using major H͚ optimization and related methods. In this chapter, the basic concepts and representations of systems and signals will be discussed.