1. Introduction
The main goal in developing adaptive methods is to address problems such as estimation or tracking in the presence of parametric uncertainties [
1]. Many different adaptive schemes has been proposed and improved over the years, such as Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) [
2], Self Tuning Regulators [
3], Adaptive Pole Placement Control [
4], Adaptive Passivity Based Control [
5], Adaptive Observers [
2], among others. Applications span process control, automotive systems, positioning systems, propulsion systems, and a huge effort in flight control (see [
6] and the references therein).
Technically speaking, the term
adaptive system has been adopted to refer to the wide set of feedback systems involving estimation and control, regardless of the specific adaptive scheme used. For analysis purposes, adaptive systems are commonly represented in the form of differential and algebraic equations, referred as
error models, which contain two different type of errors. The first error (
e) represents a tracking or estimation error and the second error (
) represents a parameter estimation error. The tracking or estimation error
e is measurable, and it is used to tune the parameter error
, which is unknown and adjustable [
7], often stated as the difference between a designed parameter estimate
and a true value
in the form
.
For continuous-time and standard-derivative dynamics, a general enough description of an error model can be given as follows [
2]:
where
contains measurable input-output data.
In early 2000’s, fractional order operators (FO) [
8] started to be introduced to model real systems, due to the link between these operators and certain physical phenomena such as damping coefficients in a variety of viscoelastic materials, difussion, and electrical impedance of biological tissues [
9]. Since then, application of FO to modelling real systems has been widely reported in literature. Just to mention some of them, we can find fractional order models for food science [
10], signal/speech processing [
11,
12], biology [
13], disease/infection rates [
14] and economics [
15]. FO have been also introduced in the control field, leading to fractional order controllers with better performance than classic integer order controllers. The reader can check many survey papers detailing these controllers and the reported results, see for instance [
16,
17,
18]. Adaptive control has not been the exception, with a wide amount of works reporting the use of FO in the adaptive controller/observer design, and/or to model the system to be controlled or identified (see for instance [
19,
20,
21,
22]). Within that, the analytical analysis of the resulting fractional order adaptive schemes became relevant, leading to the adoption of the error model concept in a generalized way, e.g., Fractional Order Error Models (FOEM). The general representation of a FOEM is the same as in (
1), (
2), but using fractional orders derivatives for
, instead of the classic integer order derivatives.
Dealing with the analysis of FOEM was and is still a challenge, mainly due to inherent characteristics of fractional operators and the lack of proper tools to analyzing them. Still, significant advances have been made over the years, such as the analysis of the four more common FOEM (e.g., FOEM1 to FOEM4) in [
23], for those cases where the fractional order is the same for differential equations of
e and
. Modifications of these FOEM were introduced in [
24], addressing the analysis of FOEM1 to FOEM4 in the presence of bounded disturbances and parameter variations. Later in [
25], the mixed order cases were analyzed for FOEM2 and FOEM3, where fractional order for differential equations of
e and
do not need to be the same, as long as the fractional order in
equation is lower or equal than the fractional order in
e equation. Although these advances have been made, still there are many open questions to the analysis of FOEM, such as how to choose the fractional orders for the adaptive laws (which leads to the fractional order in the
equation), how to prove the convergence to zero of the estimation or control error
e for some cases, how to deal with FOEM where all the components of differential equations for
e,
can have different fractional orders, among others.
A particular open problem has arisen recently due to the introduction of switched adaptive laws in adaptive schemes, aimed at improving system performance and controlling energy use and leading to a differential equation for
(e.g., (
2)) whose order can switch among a fractional order
and the integer order 1, according to certain switching rule. Indeed, the problem of analyzing the boundedness and error convergence in these switched equations has been only addressed for particular adaptive schemes. For instance, in [
26], an identification problem has been addressed as well as a Switched Fractional Order Model Reference Adaptive Control (SFOMRAC) scheme to control Linear Time Invariant (LTI) Single Input Single Output (SISO) plant. In this work, the switching rule in the adaptive law is time-based, that is, at some time instant defined by the designer, the order changes from fractional to integer. Recently, a couple of works have been published where the order of the adaptive law uses an error-based switching rule, that is, the order switches between a fractional order and the integer order according to the magnitude of the control error
e. These two works correspond to a High-gain adaptive control scheme [
27] and a SFOMRAC for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems [
28]. Although these works have provided analytical guarantees on the performance of the resulting switched schemes, the potential use of switched adaptive laws in different problems and applications leads to the need of a general framework to establish boundedness of the signals and convergence of the errors.
This is precisely the main goal of this paper, where the error model approach is adopted to analyze adaptive schemes using switched fractional order adaptive laws. The main contributions are stated in the following.
In the context of the error model approach, and including the four error equations for
e that appear more often in the study of control and estimation adaptive systems [
2], this papers proposes differential equations for the parameter error
that can switch between a fractional order and the integer order, using an error-based switching mechanism. This leads to the analysis of four Switched Fractional Order Error Models (SFOEM), specifically SFOEM1 to SFOEM4. The only previous work addressing something within this scope is [
28], where a SFOMRAC is proposed and analyzed (without proving parametric convergence), whose structure coincides with the SFOEM2 in this paper, constituting a particular case of this paper.
A complete analytical proof of stability and convergence is provided for each of the SFOEM presented, allowing its future application to any switched adaptive scheme that can be put in their form, which is the fundamental advantage of the error model approach.
In contrast to all revised literature, such as [
2,
3,
28,
29], where the four classic error models are analyzed for the case when
is a vector, in this paper the analysis is made considering
as a matrix (multi variable case) for three out of four error models. We found that the same excitation condition for the vector case is sufficient to estimate the matrix parameters. Roughly speaking, this is due to a sharing of the excitation for each column vector of the parameter matrix.
The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 contains some concepts, definitions and analytical tools to be used in the analysis throughout the paper.
Section 3 to
Section 6 presents the Switched Fractional Order Error Models 1 to 4 with their corresponding analytical analysis. Finally,
Section 7 presents the main conclusions of the work.
3. Analysis of Switched Fractional Order Error Model 1
Many problems in adaptive estimation and control may be expressed as
where
represents an unknown parameter matrix,
is a measurable
function called regressor, and
is a measurable signal, called
plant output hereafter, that can be determined at each time instant [
6]. For instance, when designing adaptive observers for linear plants, the plant output can be represented as an algebraic combination of filtered inputs and outputs [
2]. Also, the plant model used in some combined/composite approaches to adaptive control can be written in this form in (
10), as reported for instance in [
29,
33].
In these problems, usually an estimator for plant output is formulated in the form
, with
the estimated parameter matrix. If the estimation error is defined as
and the parameter error as
, it can be easily derived that the relationship between
e and
can be stated as
The most common approach for adjusting the estimate
at each time
t is to use an adaptive law that is obtained using the gradient-descent approach to minimize
[
2,
34], leading to an equation for the parameter error
as
with
an adaptive gain. Equations (
11), (
12) constitute the classic Error Model 1, completely studied in [
2, Chapter 7] for the case when
. The case when
is briefly analyzed in [
2, Chapter 10]. Fractional Order Error Model 1 (FOEM1) uses a fractional order derivative instead of the integer one in Equation (
12), whose analysis for the scalar case
can be found in [
23].
In this paper, a switched derivation order approach is used to adjust the estimated parameter
, resulting in a different error dynamics, called hereafter Switched Fractional Order Error Model 1 (SFOEM1), that has not been previously analyzed. Definition of SFOEM1 corresponds to
This yields
The adaptive gain
, aimed to manipulate the speed of (
14) and to normalize, takes a constant value
in each switching interval
, with
a designer chosen sequence of real numbers such that
for any
i.
The fractional order
is varied using the following switched strategy for any
where
and
are designer choices. The function
is a logic function (i.e., taking true/false values) defined for any
as
where
is a designer constant, and
is the largest interval of time in which the fractional mode is active at time
t, i.e.,
Definition of function
h encodes, on the one hand, a hysteresis mechanism to avoid Zeno solutions. This is accomplished by fixing a small enough
, so the switching from the integer mode to the fractional mode occurs only when
, while the switching from the fractional mode to the integer mode will occur only when
. On the other hand, function
h encodes also a mechanism to promote that in disturbed or transient stages (
) the adaptation with
should occur, and conversely, that when staying close to the aim (
) the lesser should be the need of switching to
. To this aim, the condition
means that the transitions to the fractional mode remain active as long as the fractional mode is needed, as measured in terms of time quantify
and relative to a measure of the overall time given by
, where we use the same
for simplicity but it can be scaled differently. The use of a large enough constant
C in (
18) ensures that both mechanisms previously explained are triggered after a finite number
C of switches, to let the transient as unaffected as possible.
The differential Equation (
14) is understood in the resetting mode; that is, every time a switch occurs, the initial time
a of the fractional operator is set equal to the switching time
. This defines the initial time function
in (
14). Moreover, every time a switch occurs,
, which implies
and thus, discontinuities are excluded.
3.1. Boundedness of the Signals and Convergence of the Estimation Error in SFOEM1
The following result states boundedness of the signals and convergence of the estimation error e in SFOEM1.
Theorem 3.
Consider SFOEM1 (
13), (
14)
specified by (
15), (
17), (
18)
and (
19)
. Then, θ remains bounded and . If in addition ω is assumed a bounded function, then the error e is bounded. If is also assumed bounded, then the error e converges asymptotically to zero, i.e., . Moreover, if , then , i.e., .
Proof of Theorem 3. The proof relies on proving several claims as in the follows.
i. There exists such that the existence and uniqueness of continuous solutions holds on , where is any switching time.
Proof of claim i. Since
and
is constant between switches times, the right hand side of (
16) is locally Lipschitz continuous as a function of
. Then, we can find small enough
such that the right hand side is Lipschitz continuous with respect to
and continuous with respect to
t when restricted to
. This enable us to apply Theorem 1 on the space
, by writing (
16) in the form (
7), and to conclude that there is a unique continuous solution
on
. Since
is also continuous, by (
13) the estimation error
e is also a unique continuous function on
. □
ii. The fractional mode, i.e., , can remain activated only on time intervals of finite lengths.
Proof of claim ii. By part (i), we can consider that a solution to (
16) exist, is unique and continuous at least at a small neighborhood
after the switching time. Let us consider that the fractional mode is active in the interval
with
. Note that, since (
16) operates in the resetting mode, the fractional derivative must be started in each
. For notation convenience, we set
and
.
Since the solution of (
16) is continuous on
and
remains constant in each switching interval, we can applying Theorem 2 to the function
and Property
6. Then, by using (
16), it follows that
Applying Property
6 on (
20), we obtain for any
From (
21), since right hand side is always lesser or equal than zero, then it can be concluded that
,
. Note that this will hold also for those intervals in the integer order mode, because an expression similar to (
21) can be established, just using the integer order integral in the right-hand side. By the resetting mode and the no jump condition in switching times on
, for any time interval it holds that
. Since
is bounded, it follows that
is bounded and
is bounded by a number
C depending only on the initial condition
.
Now, we need to prove that there exists a time instant , such that so that the fractional mode is deactivated in finite time. If that would not be the case and for all , then , contradicting the fact stated in the previous paragraph, namely, that for any t. This proves claim (ii).
□
iii. There is no finite escape time in each mode of operation.
Proof of claim iii. To prove this claim, we will differentiate between the intervals in fractional mode and the intervals in the integer mode.
When fractional mode is active, then the following candidate Lyapunov function can be proposed
By applying the
fractional order derivative to (
22), and using Theorem 2 and (
16), it follows that
From (
23), it can be seen that
for all
, then using [
32, Theorem 3], it can be concluded that
remains bounded and thus there is no finite time escape in fractional mode.
The proof in the integer order mode is similar, using the same candidate Lyapunov function (
22) and taking its first order derivative, leading to
. This proves the claim. □
iv. There exists a finite number of switches, after which the mode becomes integer. In particular, there is no Zeno solution.
Proof of claim iv. It follows from (ii) that if the number of switches is finite, then the final mode is necessarily integer. Also, if number of switches is finite, then there is no Zeno solution. Thus, it remains to prove that the number of switches is finite.
To this aim, it is enough proving that
(
19) is bounded by a constant that does not depend on
i, because due to the choice of the hysteresis function
h (
18), this would imply that there exists large enough
i such that
for any
, making
h false after finite switches and consequently the fractional mode would be no longer activated.
To prove that
is bounded, let us use (
21), which holds for every time interval when the fractional order mode is active. Since in fractional mode
, then from (
21) we can state
Since
is the time the fractional mode remains active and it was proved in (ii) that for every time interval, it holds that
, then it can be stated from (
24) that
Inequality (
25) establishes an upper bound for
that does not depend on the number of switches
i, and the the claim follows. □
v. Statement of Theorem 3 holds.
Proof of claim v. From claims (iii) and (iv), and since
remains bounded by a bound independent of
i, it is enough to prove the statement for the integer mode. As in the proof of item (ii), with
V as in (
22), one obtains
for the integer mode. This implies
and, by integrating this inequality,
since
. If
, then
and, hence,
. Therefore, if in addition
, then
. Applying Barbalat Lemma, we get
. On the other hand, according to (
16), the vector obtained from the
th column of
, denoted as
, satisfies for
So, by [
2, Theorem 2.16] and [
2, Comment 2.10], if
, then
. □
This completes the proof of Theorem 3.
4. Analysis of Switched Fractional Order Error Model 2
Switched Fractional Order Error Model 2 (SFOEM2) arises when the whole state vector of the system to be controlled/identified is accessible and the adaptive laws use a switched approach. In contrast to SFOEM1, where the relationship between and e is algebraic, in SFOEM2 it is dynamic.
Structure of the SFOEM2 corresponds to
In Equation (
26) and (
27),
is the tracking/estimation error, assumed to be accessible.
is a known Hurwitz matrix, e.g., a square matrix whose eigenvalues have negative real parts.
is a constant matrix, either positive or negative definite, the sign of which is assumed known and, without loss of generality, taken positive.
is the parameter error, given by
, with
the ideal (true) parameter, which is assumed to be unknown and
the adjustable parameter that estimates
.
is a measurable
function.
is a symmetric positive definite matrix such that
, with
an arbitrary positive definite matrix. The existence of such
P is ensured by the Hurwitz property of
. The structure and parameters of (
28), (
29), (
30) and (
31) are the same as explained in SFOEM1 and thus not repeated here.
As in the case of SFOEM1, the differential Equation (
27) is understood in the resetting mode; that is, every time a switch occurs, the initial time
a of the fractional operator is set equal to the switching time
. Also, every time a switch occurs,
to avoid discontinuities.
4.1. Boundedness of the Signals and Convergence of the Estimation Error in SFOEM2
In [
28], a particular adaptive control problem was addressed, namely a Switched Fractional Order Model Reference Adaptive Controller for Multiple Input Multiple Output systems, where the plant and the reference model were described by integer order differential equations and the order of the adaptive laws switched between a fractional order and the integer order. The closed loop description of the adaptive system in [
28] is identical to the structure of SFOEM2 (
26)-(
31), but the claim below is more general than [
28, Theorem 3], particularly, in providing conditions for parametric convergence.
Theorem 4.
Consider the Switched Fractional Order Error Model 2 defined by (
26), (
27),
with (
28), (
29), (
30)
and (
31).
Then, θ and e remain bounded and . If in addition ω is assumed bounded function, then the error e asymptotically converges to zero, i.e., , and if , then , i.e., .
Proof of Theorem 4. The reader is referred to the proof of Theorem 5, as SFOEM2 is a particular case of SFOEM3 by taking in the latter. □
5. Analysis of Switched Fractional Order Error Model 3
Switched Fractional Order Error Model 3 (SFOEM3) has a very similar structure than SFOEM2. However, there is a fundamental difference between them, because while the whole estimation/tracking error e is accessible in SFOEM2, only an algebraic combination of the components of e, namely , is accessible in SFOEM3. This error model usually arises when only the output of the plant to be controlled or identified is accessible, rather than its whole state vector. This makes SFOEM3 applicable to a much wider class of problems than SFOEM2.
Structure of SFOEM3 has the following form
In Equations (
32) and (
33),
is the tracking/estimation error, which is not accessible in this case, while
is the output error, which is accessible.
is a known Hurwitz matrix,
is a constant matrix,
is a constant matrix, either positive or negative definite, the sign of which is assumed known and, without loss of generality, taken positive.
is the parameter error, e.g.,
, with
the unknown parameter and
the adjustable parameter.
is the measurable
regressor function. On the other hand,
is an adaptive gain. The structure and parameters of (
34), (
35), (
36) and (
37) are the same as explained in SFOEM1 and thus not repeated here.
As stated in [
2], it can be expected that having no access to
e will imply that more stringent conditions must be imposed on the transfer function between
and
. In that sense, it is assumed that positive definite matrices
and
[
2] exist such that
which is equivalent to ask that the transfer function
is Strictly Positive Real.
5.1. Boundedness of the Signals and Convergence of the Estimation Error in SFOEM3
The following result states boundedness of the signals and convergence of the tracking/estimation error e and output error in SFOEM3.
Theorem 5.
Consider the Switched Fractional Order Error Model 3 defined by (
32), (
33),
with (
34), (
35), (
36)
and (
37)
. Then, θ, and e remain bounded and . If in addition ω is assumed bounded function, then the error e asymptotically converges to zero, i.e., , and if , then , i.e., .
Proof of Theorem 5. As in the case of SFOEM1, the proof consists of several claims, as it is detailed in the following.
i. There exists such that the existence and uniqueness of continuous solutions holds on , where is any switching time.
Proof of claim i. Since
is
, the right hand side of (
32), (
33) is locally Lipschitz continuous as a function of
and we can find small enough
such that the right hand side is Lipschitz continuous with respect to
and continuous with respect to
t. Then, Theorem 1 can be applied to (
32) and (
33), allowing to write them in the form (
7) and concluding that
are unique and continuous in
. □
ii. The fractional mode, i.e., , can only be activated on time intervals of finite lengths.
Proof of claim ii. As in the proof of claim ii for SFOEM1, let us analyze what happens in those intervals when the fractional mode is active, e.g.,
with
. Since the solution of (
32) and (
33) was proven to be continuous, the right-hand of (
32) and (
33) are continuous too, and we can take the first order derivative of
and use (
32) together with trace property
to establish that
In the same way, we can take the
derivative of
and use Theorem 2 together with (
33) to establish that
Applying the first order integral to (
39) and the
-integral to (
40) and using Properties
5 and
6, we obtain for any
Combining (
41) and (
42), the following inequality can be established
Since
, we claim that inequality (
43) implies the existence of
,
such that
. By contradiction and recalling that we are in the fractional mode, if
for all
, then there exists
such that
for all
, since
by using the induced matrix norm for
. This implies that the left-hand side of (
43) goes to
because the integrand of
goes to
. This contradicts inequality (
43). Therefore, the existence of
such that
is guaranteed, meaning that the integer mode is triggered some finite time after the fractional mode started. This proves claim (ii). □
iii. There is no finite escape time in each mode of operation.
Proof of claim iii. In the integer order mode, the claim can be easily proved by constructing a Lyapunov function
and using (
39),(
40) with
, leading to
. When the fractional order mode is active, by claim (ii), and after finite time, the switching condition
must hold, implying
cannot escape at
. Then
, and since
, the right-hand side of (
33) is bounded at
. This implies, by
integration, that
is bounded
, i.e.,
does not escape. Then, the forcing function in (
39) is bounded, and since
is stable,
e remains bounded at
and the claim is proved. □
iv. There exists a finite number of switches, after which the mode becomes integer. In particular, there is no Zeno solution.
Proof of claim iv. According to claim (ii), if the number of switches is finite, then the final mode is necessarily integer and there is no Zeno solution. Then, to prove claim (iv) it is enough to prove that the number of switches is finite. For this, as in the case of SFOEM1, it is enough to show that
given by (
37) is bounded by a constant that does not depend on
i.
As in the proof of claim (ii), in fractional mode, the condition
, the equivalence of norms in
, and
imply the existence of a constant
, independent of
, such that
for all
t when fractional order mode is active. By using the normalization factor in (
34) (recall that
and the equivalence of norms in finite dimension spaces, there exists a constant
, independent of
, such that
. Also, due to the choice of the hysteresis function
h and the equivalence of norms, there exists constant
, independent of
, such that
. Using these constants
to bound (
43) and solving the resulting integrals, it can be written that, for all
t when the fractional order mode is active, it holds that
Inequality (
44) establishes an upper bound for
(lenght of the time interval
when the fractional order mode is active ) that does not depend on
i, and the the claim follows. □
v. Statement of Theorem 5 holds.
Proof of claim v. From claims (iii) and (iv), it is enough to prove the statement for the integer mode. By considering positive definite function
V as defined in the proof of claim (iii), we get
This implies
and
. By (
32), if
, then we also have
. By Barbalat Lemma, we conclude
and
. By (
33), we also have
. Hence, for any
,
goes to zero as
. This implies that in
the left-hand side goes to zero when
and
. By assuming in addition that
, which means that there exists
such that
for any
and
, we can find
such that
for any
and
, simply by considering each component of vector
as the product of a column of
M with
. Therefore, if
, we obtain from (
46), for
t large enough and
On the other hand, integrating (
32) on
for arbitrary
, we have
By sending
, and since
e goes to zero, it follows from (
48) that
However, if
, a contradiction is obtained with (
47) whenever
does not converges to zero. Therefore, if
, then
and the claim is proved. □
Remark 1. In practical applications of Theorems 4 and 5, the bounded assumption on ω can be relaxed to ω being a bounded function of e and/or θ, in the sense that boundedness of e and/or θ imply bounded ω. For instance, in the adaptive control setup of [28], it holds , with η a bounded signal. This is because the boundedness of e and θ was established regardless of the boundedness of ω in Theorem 5, and hence, if e and/or ϕ bounded imply ω bounded, then Theorem 5 guarantees convergence of e to zero.