480

111. EXPERINEKTAL VERIFICATION A digital computer hLbS been prepared w-hich, at the discretion of the user, does one or more of the following:
1) generates the maximum length sequence from a given size of shift register; 2 ) calculates the values of A,i and C $ efor the sequence of 1) using (3) ; 3) processes measwed response data from the system being skudied for theinput sequence of 1) to provide eitheror both a) t.he cross correlation function, Le., the impulse response for carefully selected noise/system characteristics, b) frequency response parameters A,o and C$m using (6).

IEEE TRANSACTIONS

ON AUTOMATIC COWTROL, AUGUST

REFERENCES

1970

COr(lmuniCQti0nS Spacz Applications. Englewood Clifh, X. J.: Prent,lee-Hall, 1964, p. 76. J. L. W. Churchill and K. D. Boardman Experience in the use of random probing signals t o determine fkquency response of full size industrial plant.. presented at the IEE Colloquium on Random signal Testing, 3 1 1965. ~ ~ 1 3 1 D. Bell, The of information from noisy measurements, T r aA. ns. SOC. Instr.recovery Tech., vol. 18, pp.,K2-102, June 1966. H I K. D. Smith and J. C. Hamilton, The logical design ofa digital pseudorandom noise generator. I E E E Trans. Xuclear Science, rol. NS-13. pp. 351-381, February 1966. 1 5 1 J. S. Bendat.,and A. G . P i e m l . Measurement and analysis O f New Pork: Wiley, 1965. random data, (61 J. W. Co,oley and J. W . Tukcy. An algorithm for the machine computatlon of complex Founer series, M a t h . of Computatzon, vol. 19, p. 297, April 1965.
[I]
[21

s. m. Golomb. Ed.. Digital

Here we are concerned m+th I), 2 ) , and 3b). The noise source is 8; IO-stage shift register giving, therefore, a sequence length u of 1023. TabIe I shows the values of A,; and ~ $ calculated ~ i for t h i s
sequence using 2 ) of the digital program. Each unit of frequency in Table I is %/uA.t, where At is the clock pulse time of the sequence, and the values of A,i havebeen normalized with respect t.o the value a t wl. The system chosen for esamination has thetransfer funct.ion

An Improved Technique for Transfer Function

Synthesis from Frequency Response Data
Abstract-An improved curve fitting technique, based on modification of work by Levy and Sanathanan and Koerner,z incorporating known physical constraints is described. A comparison with experimental results on high-order systems shows that there is a much better guarantee of obtaining stable transfer functions and of predicting responses in other domains.
I.

where T = 0.1 second. The clock speed used is 200 Hz or At = 5 ms, and hence 01 = frequency increment = 1.228 radis. The resultsfor the syst.em of (8) are summarized by Fig. 1, -?here the true frequency response is shown along wit.h the values d c u l a t e d using the procedure described on t.he experimental output f&). The valueshave not been corrected for t,he error intmduced b y normalization at. wl,where the true amplit.ude ratio is 1.015 and not 1.0, nor for the variation in AT;,as this is very mall m e r the frequency range of interest (Table I ) .

IXTRODUCTION

During the analysis and synthesis of a complex control syst.em, itis often necessary t o employ frequencydomain curve fitking techniques i n order to estimate the coefficients of a transfer function.Oftentheform of the u n k n o m transfer funct.ion maybe determined b y using simple experimental techniques and this information may then be wed to advantage to const.rain t.he fitted t.ransfer funct.ion.

11. ANALYSIS

IV. CONCLUSIOSS It has been shown how readily the frequency response of a system can be obtained from its response to a pseudorandom binary sequence by consideration of t.he spectral properties of such a stimulus.
Since the method proposed avoids the calculation of the cross

The transfer function which is to be fit.ted t o a set of frequencydoma.in data is

G(jw)

__

N (

jw)

D(j w )

A . + AI(
Bo

jw) + A?(j ~+ ) - .-~+ A,( +- B l ( j U ) + I i z ( j w ) 2 + ... + B,(

JU)~

jwP

mrdation function, its subsequent transformat.ion, and correction

f a r the nonwhite noise characteristics of the input., considerable time saving is achieved, particularly where only a relatively small number of frequency points may be required. Also, errors due to the Fourier transformation of a. truncat.ed cross correlat.ion funct.ion are avoided. A wide range of systems may be examined by suitable modifications of the sequence length and/or clock speed, both of w h i c h -will varythe Iocation of thespectral lines of theinput sequence. Noise and harmonic rejection will be good and in the usual way be enhanced by analysis of a number of input cycles. In digitizing the continuous data, however, care must be exercised in sampling to avoid aliasing high frequencies with low frequencies [ S I . This source of error does not occur ait.h analog promsing. While a special purpose equipment can be envisaged which would perform the signal generation and the analysis, it. is felt that the pofferful applicat.ion of t.he technique lies in the associat.ion with a digitd computer either on- or off-line, perhaps incorporating the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm of Cooley and Tukey [SI. and a solution to the curve fitting problem is given by Levy1 in a weighted least-squares sense. The weight.ing function D( j w ) may be removed by the iterative method of Sanathanan and Koerner.z If in addit.ion to frequency response data t.he steady-state response of the system to such inputs as the unit. st.ep, ramp, parabola, etc., is determined, then use mag be made of the relationships betn7een the transfer functioncoefficients and the steady-state errors. A s an example, consider a system which exhibits zero error to a lmit step input and a finite steady-state error y to a unit ramp input. Equation (1) may then be modified as follows:

If the procedure given in Levy1 is followed, the equations to be solved become

J. D. LAMB

CORRESPONDENCE

481

where

c u2

- 2s2
x4

... ...
... ". ... ...

T 3

-s4
-Ts
s 6

-x6
0

Tl
u 4

s;

T5
8 6

...
... ...

-us
0

-7 '
-s s

...

Us

[cl =

and

1 1 1 . EXAMPLE
Theparticular technique previously described has been programmed for a digital computer and experimental results obt.ained from a complex electrohydraulic servomechanism have been used to obtain a t.ransfer function. The results are illustrated in Fig. 1, where a comparison is made with the curve fit. obtained where no prior knowledge of the velocity error characterist.ic is assumed. The improvement in the comt.rained curve fit is clearly discernible. In order tomake use of thetransferfunctionobtained,one might. e q e c t t o be able to predict. t.he system transient response and the two impulse responses given by the transfer functions relat,ing to Fig. 1, are shown in Fig. 2, where they are compared n4t.h the measured system cross correlation function (which is a good approximation tothe impulse response). The impulse response given by the constrained curve fit compares very favorably with the measured data, whereas t h a t obt.ained from the unconstrained cwve fit is unstable. The tendency for the transfer functionpredicted from freauencv

where
wi;

X-th experimental frequency n total number of experiment.al frequencies RI, real part of G ( jwk)

I n the case of a system exhibiting zero step and ramp error but a finite parabolic error, a similar solution is clearly available.

fit technique. Investigation constraintsarebuiltintothecwve of the results given by Sanathanan and Koernerl show that both

482

IEEE TRANSACTIOSS

os

AUTOXATIC COATROL,

AUGUST

1970

1.5

blP R A T 1 0

0.5

0
1.00

e
1 I

*--r--)-+-+

I - I I I I

'1000

FREQUENCY I N RAD/S

-90
TWSFER
-1-

FUNCTi0:i

COEFFICiEhTS UNCONSTiUIXED NIJlERATOR DENO?LiXWOII

CO:UST&iiPED DEBONINATOR Nb?ERATOR

-270

-560
5.3116x1011' 4.9000~10 16

-45c

-540

Comparison between constrained and unconstrained curve fits.

RESWNSE

0 EXPERIMENTAL POINTS

FROM A CROSS CORRELATOR.

i ;

Fig. 2.

Impulse responses resulting from two t,ransfer functions compared with cross correlation results.

CORRESPONDEWCE

483
type are
1) reduced computation time, 2) greatly increased probability of convergence by the root program, and 3) single locus study without, having t.o obtaintheothers(in. the study of many systems this is a desirable charact.erist,ic).

denominator polynomials obtained by t.heir technique, andby t.hat. of Levy give rise to right half-plane poles. I n fact., of several hundred curve fits carried outbytheauthor recently,about. 30 percent resulted in unstable transfer functions when t.he technique of Levy' and Sanat.hanan and Koerner* was employed. When t.he t.ransfer functions fit,ted were constrained t.0 haveparticular velocity error characterist,ics, t,he percent.age of unstable systems fell to 1 percent.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
The results quoted here clearly show t.he improvement that maybe gained by adopting the technique described. This improvement is not only one of improved accuracy of fit to theexperiment.al dat,a but also that of a reduced tendency for the predicted transfer function to cont.ain right half-plane poles. The improvement in the prediction of the system response in other domains is a.lso evident.

The suggestion of an algorithm which will accomplish this t.ask was recent.ly published [2]. However, its applicat.ion is limited to the regular root. locus. I t is t.he purpose of this correspondence to develop a procedure which is applicable to a regular root locus as well as to several other types.
AiPPROXID.IATION OF A

LOCUS B Y

A STRAIGHT

LINE

The characterist,ic equation of a typical feedback control system is of the form

1 fG ( s , T ) = 0 (1)

P. 8. P.4YWE
Dynamic Analysis Group University of Wales Inst. of Sci. and Tech. Cardiff, Wales

where G ( s , T ) is the open-loop transfer f u n d o n and T is the parameter for which t,he locus is being made. The necessary and sufficient conditions for a point. SO tQ be a point. on the locus are

i G(so,T) i
and

(2)

LG(so,T) = RT
where 71 = 1,3,5,. for negative feedback. The open-loop transfer f u n d o n can be nTitt.en as

--

G(x,y,T) = Gn(z,y,T)

A Generalized Root Locus Following Technique

Abstract-A generalized root locus following technique is presented. Fundamentally, the concept involved isthat of approximating a locus by a straight line in order to predict another point on the locus. The method is applicable to a large class of root loci problems and yields expressions for calculating the real and imaginary parts of the roots interms of the parameter for which the locus is desired.

+jG~(x,y,T)

(4)

in which GR(x,y,T) and GI(x,y,T) are t,he real and imaginary parts of G(x,y,T), respectively, and x and y are the real and imaginary parts of t,he complex variable s. The angle relation of (4)is

whereas the magnihde-squared relat,ion of (4) is

ISTRODUCTION
Oft,en in the study of a system it, becomes necessary to find the loci of the roots of the characteristic equation as a functicn of some parameter. This parameter could be open-loop gain in regular root loci or sampling period in modfied root. loci. (A modijed root locus is a locus that is a function of sampling period [SI.) It could even be t.he gain of a minor loop of some control system, or it could be real time if the system has t.ime-varying elements. In the past t,he plot. of t.he root loci as a function of open-loop gain has been considered in detail [I]. A regular root locus (a root locus that is a funct,ion of open-loop gain) can be achieved wit.h B spirule; however, as the comp1exit.y of t.he syst.em increases this method becomes impractical because of t,he amount. of labor involved. This has led several people to consider digit.al computer methods

Equations (5) and (6) represent t.wo hypersurfaces which are functions of the three variables x, y , and T . The manifold of these hypersurfaces is composed of several lines, namely, the t.hreedimensional lines of the root loci. It is desired to find a line which i s tangent to the line cf intersection of these t a o surfaces. This is done by first finding ihe gradients of the two surfaces. These are

and

Pl-C71.
The simplest of these met.hods uses the computer t,o find the roots of the characteristic equation as the parameter is varied [4], For a simple system this met.hodsuffices. For more complicated syst,ems several problems such as inconsistency in rootprogram convergence or excess computer computation t,ime may result. I n circumventingthese difficulties a better approach might, be a locus following technique. The advantages of amethod of this

where i, j , and k are unit vectors. Taking the cross product of the two gradients results in