Design of Structured Static Output Feedback Controllers

We address the design of structured controllers for linear discrete-time systems. Decentralized controllers are designed that use local measurements and a minimal number of additional measurement links between the subsystems and the controllers. The structure of the decentralized controller, i.e. the additional links between the subsystems and the controllers, is not specified in advance but included into the controller design. We consider static output feedback for multivariable subsystems and define a pattern matrix to deal with the block structure of the controller. We formulate this problem as a maximization of the degree of decentralization, subject to a given H∞-performance. For the resulting non-convex optimization problem, numerically tractable convex relaxations are provided and an example shows the effectiveness of this approach.