Regional, semiglobal, global nonlinear anti-windup via switching design

In this paper we propose a novel technique for nonlinear anti-windup augmentation via hysteresis switching of linear control laws. The approach is applicable to any control system for a linear plant. In the case when the linear plant is exponentially stable, a finite number of gains guarantees global exponential stability (GES) of the closed-loop, while for exponentially unstable plants, the approach provides regional results. In the marginally unstable case (namely, for plants with poles on the imaginary axis but not in the right hand plane), the approach provides semiglobal exponential stability (SGES) when using a finite number of switching regions or global asymptotic stability (GAS) when using an infinite number of switching regions. For the exponentially unstable case regional exponential stability (RES) is provided. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the approach on two examples, one involving an exponentially stable plant and one involving an exponentially unstable plant.