Enhancing Strong Neighbor-Based Optimization for Distributed Model Predictive Control Systems

This paper considers a class of large-scale systems which is composed of many interacting subsystems, and each of them is controlled by an individual controller. For this type of system, to improve the optimization performance of the entire closed-loop system in a distributed framework without the entire system’s information or too-complicated network information, connectivity is always an important topic. To achieve this purpose, a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) design method is proposed in this paper, where each local model predictive control (MPC) considers the optimization performance of its strong coupling subsystems and communicates with them. A method to determine the strength of the coupling relationship based on the closed-loop system’s performance and subsystem network connectivity is proposed for the selection of each subsystem’s neighbors. Finally, through integrating the steady-state calculation, the designed DMPC is able to guarantee the recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system in the cases of both tracking set point and stabilizing system to zeroes. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed DMPC.