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Active disturbance rejection control for non-

minimum phase systems

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Shen Zhao Zhiqiang Gao

Michigan State University Cleveland State University
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 Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Non-minimum Phase
Systems
Shen Zhao1 , Zhiqiang Gao1
1. Center for Advanced Control Technologies, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA
E-mail: z.gao@ieee.org

Abstract: Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) has been applied to solve various types of control problems across many
engineering disciplines, but largely within the confine of minimum phase systems. This paper, however, explores systematically
its applications to non-minimum phase (NMP) systems, particularly those with transfer functions that have right half plane zeros.
It is first shown that, a regular ADRC controller, if not tuned carefully, could easily yield an undesirable solution for NMP
systems. We then demonstrate the reasons behind the difficulty using transfer function analysis, leading to a solution in how we
tune the ADRC for NMP systems. In particular, a systematic design and tuning procedure is obtained based on the relationship
between the high frequency gain of the system and the controller bandwidth. Finally, the proposed method allows a user to easily
make a tradeoff between the undershoot, which is unique in NMP systems, and the response time, using the frequency response
method of gain and phase compensation.
Key Words: Active disturbance rejection control, Non-minimum phase system, Frequency response method

1 INTRODUCTION 2 TWO FORMULATIONS

Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) as a novel,
emerging control design method has been applied to solve
various types of control problems across many engineering
disciplines, such as motion control [1]-[2], chemical process
control [3], micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) con-
trol [4], etc. and it shows great potential in performance
improvements, energy savings, less wear and tear, mostly
within the confine of minimum phase systems.
There are, however, real world systems that exhibit non-
minimum phase (NMP) behavior, such as the hydraulic tur-
bines, torpedoes, airplanes [5], and so on. It is well known
that NMP systems are hard to deal with due to the additional
phase shift caused by the unstable zero, and the fact that on
a root locus, closed-loop poles move toward zeros as gain
increases, including of course those zeros in the right half
plane (RHP). A familiar telling sign of RHP zero is an un-
dershoot in the step response, indicating that high frequency
gain and low frequency gain of the system have opposite
signs.
Though many topics, such as decoupling of multi-input-
multi-output systems, time-delayed systems, cascade sys-
tems and chaos systems are covered in [6], the only book
on ADRC, the design problem associated with RHP zeros is
not addressed. Hence the question: can ADRC be applied
to NMP systems? Simulation results in [5] seem to suggest
that the answer is yes. The objective of the research leading
to this paper is to answer this question definitively based on
not only simulation, but also analytical justifications. More
importantly for practitioners, a particular tuning method is
proposed for ADRC as it is applied to NMP systems.
This paper is organized as follows. Two ADRC design for-
mulations are described in Section 2 as they are applied to
NMP systems. In Section 3, analysis reveals insights behind
the difficulty. An ADRC tuning method is proposed in Sec-
tion 4. Finally concluding remarks are included in Section 5.
A general system can be represented by
sm + zm−1 sm−1 + · · · + z1 s + z0
Gp (s) = k (1)
sn + pn−1 sn−1 + · · · + p1 s + p0
For ADRC design, the system order is chosen as n − m and
b0 is set to k using the relative degree method [7]. A vibra-
tion suppression problem which has stable zeros has been
solved successfully using this method [2]. But it is found
that the method does not work for non-minimum phase sys-
tems, as shown below.
Let us consider a second order non-minimum phase system
with a RHP zero given below in the transfer function form
b(c − s)
Gp (s) = (2)
s2 + a1 s + a2
where a1 , a2 , b and c are all positive numbers. Normally
we can either treat it as a first order system using the rela-
tive degree method, or regard it as a second order system by
ignoring the unstable zero. Since the former uses the high
frequency gain and the latter uses the low frequency gain in
the design, they are referred to as high frequency gain for-
mulation and low frequency gain formulation respectively.
The ADRC design based on those two formulations will be
carried out in the subsequent two subsections.
2.1 High Frequency Gain Formulation
For system (2) the corresponding differential equation is
shown below.
ÿ + a1 ẏ + a2 y = −bu̇ + bcu (3)
The relative degree of the given system is one, so by inte-
grating system equation (3) and manipulating the terms we
will have a first order system as follows
w w
ẏ = −bu + bc u − a1 y − a2 y
w w
= b0 u + f (y, y, u) (4)
which is in the standard ADRC form. Defining states as 2.2 Low Frequency Gain Formulation
x1 = y and x2 = f , the state space representation of (4) Another possible way to formulate this problem is ignoring
is { the unstable zero and considering system (2) as a system
ẋ = Ax + b0 Bu + E f˙ with a relative degree of two represented by the following
(5)
y = Cx equation.
where
[ ] [ ] [ ] ÿ = bcu − bu̇ − a1 ẏ − a2 y
0 1 1 0 [ ]
A= ,B = ,E = ,C = 1 0 = b0 u + f (y, ẏ, u̇) (8)
0 0 0 1
Defining states as x1 = y, x2 = ẏ and x3 = f , the state
A second order extended state observer (ESO) is constructed
space representation of (8) is
correspondingly for system (5) {
ẋ = Ax + b0 Bu + E f˙
ż = Az + b̂0 Bu + Leo (6) (9)
y = Cx
where eo = x1 − z1 = y − z1 is the observer error and
[ ]T where
L = β1 β2 is the observer gain vector. β1 and β2 are      
0 1 0 0 0
chosen to put all of the observer eigenvalues at −ωo for the
A= 0 0 1 ,B =  1 ,E =  0 
ease of tuning [8], so in this case β1 = 2ωo and β2 = ωo2 .
0 0 0 0 1
Here ωo is referred to as the observer bandwidth. [ ]
The controller is designed as C= 1 0 0
u0 − z2 Hence a third order ESO is built similarly for system (9). In
u= (7)
b̂0 this case b̂0 = bc is positive.
where u0 = kp (r − y) and kp = ωc is chosen to put the ż = Az + b̂0 Bu + Leo (10)
controller eigenvalue at −ωc [8]. Here ωc is referred to as where eo = x1 − z1 = y − z1 is the observer error and
the controller bandwidth. For further ease of tuning, ωc is [ ]T
L = β1 β2 β3 is the observer gain vector. Here
chosen to be ωo /2. The ADRC design so far is almost the
β1 = 3ωo , β2 = 3ωo2 and β3 = ωo3 .
same as it normally is, except b̂0 = −b here is negative.
The controller is designed as
Simulations are run for a specific system with a1 = 7,
a2 = 10, b = 1 and c = 1, which is also used for the u0 − z3
u= (11)
rest part of the paper unless specified. Different values of b̂0
the observer bandwidth are chosen over quite a big range to where u0 = kp (r − y) − kd ẏ and kp = ωc2 , kd = 2ωc .
simulate the system responses, but none of them gives a sta- Again simulations are run to find an appropriate solution to
ble result. One of the simulation results is shown in Figure 1. this problem. Similar results are found that for most values
of the observer bandwidth, the system is unstable. Only a
2
very small stable range for the observer bandwidth is found,
with which a very slow system response is obtained. A par-
1
ticular response with ωo = 2.4 is shown in Figure 2. A
0 disturbance is introduced at 60 seconds.
−1

−2 Reference 1.2
Response
−3 1

−4
0.8
−5 Reference
0.6
Response
−6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0.4
Time (sec)

0.2
Fig. 1: Simulation results for high frequency gain formula-
tion 0

−0.2
As one can see, the transient part of the response is almost 0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (sec)
perfect without any undershoot. However, when the system
goes near to the steady state it becomes unstable. An intu- Fig. 2: Simulation results for low frequency gain formula-
itive explanation of this is that since b̂0 is negative, for the tion
high frequency part the system is a negative feedback which
explains why the transient response is very good. On the As shown above, the two design formulations of ADRC do
other hand, for the low frequency part the system is a pos- not fit the non-minimum phase problem quite well. More
itive feedback which leads to an unexpected result. More researches based on frequency domain analysis are carried
detailed analysis will be conducted in Section 3 to give more out in the next section to find the reasons behind it and the
insights to this problem. applicable approaches.
 Fig. 3: Diagram of the ADRC structure with state feedback
3 FREQUENCY DOMAIN ANALYSIS
Since the design of ADRC is simplified to the linear form,
it is now easy to take the advantage of the classical control
theory and perform the frequency domain analysis [9]. To do
the frequency domain analysis, we have to put the ESO into
transfer function form. A schematic of the ADRC design
with state feedback is shown in Figure 3. This design can be
transformed into an equivalent two degree of freedom trans-
fer function form as shown in Figure 4, where H(s) is the
pre-filter transfer function and C(s) is the controller transfer
function.
It is not difficult to derive the transfer functions using linear
system theory. The equivalent transfer functions for a sec-
ond order ADRC with state feedback are given in (12) and
(13), and those for a third order ADRC with state feedback
are given in (14) and (15) as well.
Fig. 4: Equivalent transfer function structure of ADRC
kp (s2 + β1 s + β2 )
H(s) = (12)
(kp β1 + β2 )s + kp β2
(kp β1 + β2 )s + kp β2
C(s) = (13)
b̂0 [s2 + (β1 + 1)s]
3 2
H(s) =
kp (s + β1 s + β2 s + β3 )
(kp β1 + kd β2 + β3 )s2 + (kp β2 + kd β3 )s + kp β3
(14)
(kp β1 + kd β2 + β3 )s2 + (kp β2 + kd β3 )s + kp β3
C(s) =
b̂0 [s3 + (β1 + 1)s2 + (β2 + β1 + 1)s]
(15)
3.1 Analysis for High Frequency Gain Formulation
Now reconsider the first formulation in Section 2. The char-
acteristic equation of the closed-loop transfer function can
be obtained from (2) and (13) as
s4 + (a1 + β1 + 1)s3
+(a2 + a1 (β1 + 1) − (kp β1 + β2 )b/b̂0 )s2
+(a2 (β1 + 1) + c(kp β1 + β2 )b/b̂0 − kp β2 b/b̂0 )s
+cb/b̂0 = 0 (16)
Noticing that for any ωo , the coefficients of the highest order
term and lowest order term will have the opposite signs, the
system will have at least one pole locates in RHP. Hence the
instability.
This could also be explained intuitively, by examining (13),
where C(s) is found having a negative sign due to the neg-
ative b̂0 , which makes the loop a positive feedback loop ac-
cording to Figure 4.
Though with a negative b̂0 the transient response is perfect
without any undershoot, for the non-minimum phase sys-
tems, the control design should focus on stabilizing the low
frequency part first, hence the undershoot is unavoidable be-
cause the high frequency part always has a different sign
from the low frequency part.
Remark: Never use a negative b̂0 in the ADRC design if the
DC gain of the system is positive; doing so will lead to a
positive feedback loop for the system.
3.2 Analysis for Low Frequency Gain Formulation
Let us reconsider the second formulation in Section 2. The
characteristic equation of the closed-loop transfer function
derived from (2) and (15) is a little complicated, so we put it
in the following form.
s5 : 1
s4 : a1 + β1 + 1
s3 : (a1 + 1)(β1 + 1) + a2 + β2
−b(kp β1 + kd β2 + β3 )/b̂0
s 2
: (a1 + a2 )(β1 + 1) + bc(kp β1 + kd β2 + β3 )/b̂0
+a1 β2 − b(kp β2 + kd β3 )/b̂0
1
s : a2 (β2 + β1 + 1) + bc(kp β2 + kd β3 )/b̂0
−bkp β3 /b̂0
0
s : bckp β3 /b̂0 (17)
For the system to be stable, at least all of the coefficients
should be positive. We notice that all of the system param-
eters as well as the observer and controller bandwidths are
positive, and only the last terms of s3 , s2 and s1 have neg- is increased from 2.4 to 20. The response is far better than
ative signs which may result in negative coefficients. Ac- the result obtained from Section 2 which is acceptable now.
cording to the selection of the observer bandwidth and the
controller bandwidth, the negative term has a higher order in
1.2
terms of ωo than the positive term, which means when ωo
goes beyond a certain value the coefficients will go negative 1
and the system is going to be unstable. 0.8
This is reasonable if we recall the classical control design for Reference
non-minimum phase systems. From the root locus point of 0.6 ωo=2.4,b0=1

view, as the feedback gain K increases from zero to infinity, ωo=20,b0=100

the closed-loop poles go from the open loop poles to open
loop zeros or infinity. Since there is an unstable zero in the
non-minimum phase system, K must have an upper limit.
This is also true for the ADRC design.
Remark: In the ADRC design for non-minimum phase sys-
tems the observer bandwidth will have an upper limit to keep
the system stable.
Through the frequency domain analysis, the reason why
those two design formulations do not work for the non-
minimum phase system becomes clearer. The solutions to
this problem are discussed in the following section.
4 DESIGN SOLUTIONS AND TRADEOFFS
In the first subsection an ADRC design solution to non-
minimum phase systems is given. How to make a tradeoff
in the ADRC design for non-minimum phase systems is dis-
cussed in the second subsection.
4.1 Design Solution - Increasing b̂0
Based on the frequency domain analysis in the previous sec-
tion, we can see from (17), by increasing b̂0 the negative
term gets smaller and so does its effect, which means that
the system is more stable or with the same stability a higher
observer bandwidth can be achieved.
To analytically derive the upper limit for the observer band-
width is non-trivial, so a computer program is written to find
the upper limits of the observer bandwidth according to dif-
ferent values of b̂0 . Figure 5 is a plot of the result. The red
region (lower part) represents the stable range, while the blue
region (upper part) represents the unstable range.
40
35
0.4
0.2
0
−0.2
0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (sec)
Fig. 6: Simulation results for low frequency gain formula-
tion - comparison between original b0 and increased b0
Further increasing of b̂0 can achieve even higher observer
bandwidth, but overshoot and oscillation come into play
when the bandwidth is too high. Simulation results show that
not much improvement on reducing the response time is ob-
tained from further increasing b̂0 . Based on a large amount
of simulations, a range of 20 to 100 times of its nominal
value is suggested for b̂0 .
4.2 Design Tradeoffs
As we all know, there is a tradeoff between the response time
and the undershoot of a non-minimum phase system. That
is, a system with a faster response will have more undershoot
and vice versa. We are not able to remove this dilemma, but
we can provide a tool that allows the user to make an easier
tradeoff between the response time and the undershoot.
For a non-minimum phase system with fast poles, which nor-
mally has a relative fast response but a bigger undershoot,
the tradeoff can be made quite easily by simply lowering the
observer bandwidth which will reduce the undershoot at the
cost of slowing down the response. Figure 7 shows the sim-
ulation results of a system with the following transfer func-
tion.
1−s
G(s) = (18)
(s + 10)(s + 10)

30 1.5

25
1
o

20
ω

15 Reference
0.5 b0=100, ωo=50
10
b0=100, ωo=30
5
0
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
b0
−0.5

Fig. 5: Stable region search result

−1
0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (sec)
Simulations are also run to demonstrate the effectiveness of
this method. As shown in Figure 6, with a bigger b̂0 , 100 Fig. 7: Achieving smaller undershoot by lowering the ob-
times of its nominal value, the allowable observer bandwidth server bandwidth
For a non-minimum phase system with slow poles, however, 5 CONCLUDING REMARKS
it is hard to get a fast response. Because the observer band-
In this paper, design issues associated with the application of
width has an upper limit, increasing system bandwidth will
ADRC to non-minimum phase systems are discussed. It is
push the system close to instability. Hence producing more
shown that the standard ADRC design and tuning can lead
overshoot, instead of reducing the response time. Since the
to instability problems if these issues are not handled with
pole placement ability of the ADRC design is inhibited, the
care. Tuning techniques and design tradeoffs are discussed.
only way is to do it manually by adding a lead compensator
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0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (sec)

Fig. 8: Achieving faster response by adding a lead compen-

sator