IAE performance based signal complexity measure

In the actual production, measuring the complexity of set point signals for a control system has practical significance. This paper proposes a new method for the complexity measure aiming mostly at set points of a system. Firstly, a standard SISO (Single Input Single Output) system is built as the complexity test system. Complexity index of a set point signal is defined based on the IAE (Integrated Absolute Error) performance. Then, a general complexity measure method is introduced for common set point signals. At last, complexity of some common set points and the AGC (Automatic Generation Control) orders for a power plant are analyzed. Tests and comparisons of the new method with two traditional methods (Lempel–Ziv complexity approach and Sample Entropy-Based approach) have shown that the IAE-based measure method introduced in this paper is reasonable and suitable for the complexity measurement of a set point signal in a control system.