Elucidation of the state-space regions wherein model predictive control and anti-windup strategies achieve identical control policies

Abstract

This paper explores the situations in which two well-known (and so far regarded as non-related) techniques for dealing with saturating actuators are equivalent. Model predictive control, on the one hand, is based on a receding horizon quadratic optimal control problem which is solved subject to input constraints. On the other hand, anti-windup methods are ad-hoc procedures which achieve input saturation in an instantaneous fashion. Both methods are known to perform well in practice and each has its strong advocates. In this paper we characterise regions of the state-space wherein both techniques provide identical solutions.