Dynamic control allocation for sampled-data closed-loop systems

In this paper the problem of dynamic control allocation is studied in the context of a continuous-time plant regulated by means of a digital controller, comprising sampling and holding blocks. The proposed architecture consists of an annihilator unit designed on the basis of the sampled-data equivalent description of the plant and of a discrete-time steady-state generator/optimizer driven by the exogenous reference signal. By relying on the feed-forward nature of the design, it is shown that the allocation unit yields the optimal solution in finite time, differently from existing solutions purely in the context of continuous-time plants.