Motivated by recent research to automate radiotherapy, this thesis looks into feedback control problems where the feedback sensor imposes considerable time delay. The use of an asymptotic estimator is considered as a method to compensate for the time delay. Properties and parameterizations of asymptotic estimators are analyzed. It is shown that if such a delay compensation scheme is adopted, a separation principle holds, which allows for independent design of the feedback controller and the time delay compensator. The radiotherapy problem is used as a case study to show how asymptotic estimators may be designed, exploiting the separation principle. Lastly, the thesis considers multivariable versions of asymptotic estimators.

Motivated by recent research to automate radiotherapy, this thesis looks into feedback control problems where the feedback sensor imposes considerable time delay. The use of an asymptotic estimator is considered as a method to compensate for the time delay. Properties and parameterizations of asymptotic estimators are analyzed. It is shown that if such a delay compensation scheme is adopted, a separation principle holds, which allows for independent design of the feedback controller and the time delay compensator. The radiotherapy problem is used as a case study to show how asymptotic estimators may be designed, exploiting the separation principle. Lastly, the thesis considers multivariable versions of asymptotic estimators.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EllonPM_DISSERT.pdf: 1231242 bytes, checksum: 49456bef5c0d0bfdc5bf49d689568b60 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-01-27 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico / Several mobile robots show non-linear behavior, mainly due friction phenomena between the mechanical parts of the robot or between the robot and the ground. Linear models are efficient in some cases, but it is necessary take the robot non-linearity in consideration when precise displacement and positioning are desired. In this work a parametric model identification procedure for a mobile robot with differential drive that considers the dead-zone in the robot actuators is proposed. The method consists in dividing the system into Hammerstein systems and then uses the key-term separation principle to present the input-output relations which shows the parameters from both linear and non-linear blocks. The parameters are then simultaneously estimated through a recursive least squares algorithm. The results shows that is possible to identify the dead-zone thresholds together with the linear parameters / V?rios rob?s m?veis apresentam comportamentos n?o-lineares, principalmente ocasionados por fen?menos de atrito entre as partes mec?nicas do rob? ou entre o rob? e o solo. Modelagens puramente lineares apresentam-se eficientes em alguns casos, mas ? preciso levar em considera??o as n?o-linearidades do rob? quando se deseja movimentos ou posicionamentos precisos. Este trabalho prop?e um procedimento de identifica??o param?trica do modelo de um rob? m?vel com acionamento diferencial, no qual s?o consideradas as n?o-linearidades do tipo zona-morta presentes nos atuadores do rob?. A proposta baseia-se no modelo de Hammerstein para dividir o sistema em blocos lineares e n?o-lineares. O princ?pio da separa??o do termo chave ? utilizado para demonstrar a rela??o entre as entradas e sa?das do sistema com os par?metros tanto da parcela linear quanto da n?o-linear. Os par?metros de ambas as parcelas s?o identificados simultaneamente, atrav?s de um algoritmo de m?nimos quadrados recursivo. Os resultados mostram que ? poss?vel identificar o valor os limites da zona-morta assim como os par?metros da parcela linear do modelo do sistema

Traditionally, source coding (data compression) and channel coding (error protection) are performed separately and sequentially, resulting in what we call a tandem (separate) coding system. In practical implementations, however, tandem coding might involve a large delay and a high coding/decoding complexity, since one needs to remove the redundancy in the source coding part and then insert certain redundancy in the channel coding part. On the other hand, joint source-channel coding (JSCC), which coordinates source and channel coding or combines them into a single step, may offer substantial improvements over the tandem coding approach. This thesis deals with the fundamental Shannon-theoretic limits for a variety of communication systems via JSCC. More specifically, we investigate the reliability function (which is the largest rate at which the coding probability of error vanishes exponentially with increasing blocklength) for JSCC for the following discrete-time communication systems: (i) discrete memoryless systems; (ii) discrete memoryless systems with perfect channel feedback; (iii) discrete memoryless systems with source side information; (iv) discrete systems with Markovian memory; (v) continuous-valued (particularly Gaussian) memoryless systems; (vi) discrete asymmetric 2-user source-channel systems. For the above systems, we establish upper and lower bounds for the JSCC reliability function and we analytically compute these bounds. The conditions for which the upper and lower bounds coincide are also provided. We show that the conditions are satisfied for a large class of source-channel systems, and hence exactly determine the reliability function. We next provide a systematic comparison between the JSCC reliability function and the tandem coding reliability function (the reliability function resulting from separate source and channel coding). We show that the JSCC reliability function is substantially larger than the tandem coding reliability function for most cases. In particular, the JSCC reliability function is close to twice as large as the tandem coding reliability function for many source-channel pairs. This exponent gain provides a theoretical underpinning and justification for JSCC design as opposed to the widely used tandem coding method, since JSCC will yield a faster exponential rate of decay for the system error probability and thus provides substantial reductions in complexity and coding/decoding delay for real-world communication systems. / Thesis (Ph.D, Mathematics & Statistics) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-13 22:31:56.425

L’objectif principal de cette thèse consiste à étudier plusieurs thématiques : l’étude de l’observation et la commande d’un système de structure flexible et l’étude de la stabilité asymptotique d’un système d’échangeurs thermiques. Ce travail s’inscrit dans le domaine du contrôle des systèmes décrits par des équations aux dérivées partielles (EDP). On s’intéresse au système du corps-poutre en rotation dont la dynamique est physiquement non mesurable. On présente un observateur du type Luenberger de dimension infinie exponentiellement convergent afin d’estimer les variables d’état. L’observateur est valable pour une vitesse angulaire en temps variant autour d’une constante. La vitesse de convergence de l’observateur peut être accélérée en tenant compte d’une seconde étape de conception. La contribution principale de ce travail consiste à construire un simulateur fiable basé sur la méthode des éléments finis. Une étude numérique est effectuée pour le système avec la vitesse angulaire constante ou variante en fonction du temps. L’influence du choix de gain est examinée sur la vitesse de convergence de l’observateur. La robustesse de l’observateur est testée face à la mesure corrompue par du bruit. En mettant en cascade notre observateur et une loi de commande stabilisante par retour d’état, on souhaite obtenir une stabilisation globale du système. Des résultats numériques pertinents permettent de conjecturer la stabilité asymptotique du système en boucle fermée. Dans la seconde partie, l’étude est effectuée sur la stabilité exponentielle des systèmes d’échangeurs thermiques avec diffusion et sans diffusion. On établit la stabilité exponentielle du modèle avec diffusion dans un espace de Banach. Le taux de décroissance optimal du système est calculé pour le modèle avec diffusion. On prouve la stabilité exponentielle dans l’espace Lp pour le modèle sans diffusion. Le taux de décroissance n’est pas encore explicité dans ce dernier cas. / The main objective of this thesis consists to investigate the following themes : observation and control of a flexible structure system and asymptotic stability of a heat exchangers system. This work is placed in the field of the control of systems described by partial differential equations (PDEs). We consider a rotating body-beam system whose dynamics are not physically measurable. An infinite-dimensional exponentially convergent Luenberger-like observer is presented in order to estimate the state variables. The observer is also valid for a time-varying angular velocity around some constant. We can accelerate the decay rate of the observer by a second step design. The main contribution of this work consists in building a numerical simulator based on the finite element method (FEM). A numerical investigation is carried out for the system with constant or time-varying angular velocity. We examine the influence of the gain choice on the decay rate of the observer. The robustness of the observer is tested with the measurement corrupted by noise. By cascading our observer and a feedback control law, we wish to obtain a global stabilization of the rotating bodybeam system. The relevant numerical results make it possible for us to conjecture that the closed-loop system is locally asymptotically stable. We investigate the exponential stability of the heat exchangers systems with diffusion or without diffusion. We establish the exponential stability of the model with diffusion in a Banach space. Moreover, the optimal decay rate of the system is computed for the model with diffusion. We prove exponential stability in (C[0, 1])4 space for the model without diffusion. The optimal decay rate in the latter case is not yet found.