A Robust Approach to Fault Tolerant Controller Design Based on

GIMC structure for Non-Minimum Phase systems

Abstract-This paper represents a robust scheme for
designing fault tolerant controller (FTC) based on
Generalized Internal Model Control structure, and extends
it to non-minimum phase LTI systems. In this scheme, first
the nominal controller is designed to have a closed-loop
stability and acceptable performance, and then by
correcting the nominal controller based on the idea of
GIMC, a robustification signal is imposed to compensate the
actuator faults. The proposed scheme, deals with non-
minimum phase systems by utilizing the idea of
transmission zero-assignment. It will be shown that the
problem of zero-assignment problem for state-accessible
systems is equivalent to a pole-placement problem with state
feedback on a reduced-order subspace, which always has a
solution. The advantages of the proposed control scheme
have been verified by the simulation on the quadruple-tank
process subjected to the actuator fault.

Keywords: Fault Tolerant Controller (FTC), Non-
Minimum Phase System, Transmission Zero-Assignment,
Generalized Internal Model Control (GIMC).
1. Introduction
In the early stages of control applications, closed-loop
performance was the main objective for the control
engineer. To achieve this goal, the implementations of
these feedback configurations involved sensors, actuators,
electronic instrumentation, and signal processors.
However, during a normal operation, these parts could
fail in some degree, and the resulting performance of the
closed-loop system will be largely deteriorated, or even
instability can be observed. So, it is necessary to design
controllers which are capable of not only diagnosing
faults in closed-loop systems, but also maintaining
closed-loop stability and performance in the presence of
faults. A closed-loop control system which can tolerate
component malfunctions, while maintaining desirable
performance and stability properties is said to be a Fault-
Tolerant Control system (FTCs) (see, [1]-[2]).
FTC can be approached from two perspectives:
passive and active [3]. Passive approaches make use of
robust control techniques to ensure that a closed-loop
system remains insensitive to certain faults using constant
controller parameters and without use of on-line fault
information [4]-[5]. Active approaches react to the
system component faults actively by reconfiguring
control actions so that the stability and acceptable
performance of the entire system can be maintained. In
such control systems, the controller compensates for the
impacts of the faults either by selecting a pre-computed
control law or by synthesizing a new one on-line [6]-[7].
The survey papers [8] and [9] give the state of the art in
the field of FTC.
One of the approaches in FTC design is control
systems based on Generalized Internal Model Control.
In traditional feedback control systems, it is well
recognized that a robust controller design is usually
achieved at the expense of performance. This is not hard
to understand since most robust control design techniques
are based on the worst possible scenario which may never
occur in a particular control system. The GIMC structure
was proposed for this problem [10]. This structure is IMC
generalized by introducing outer feedback controller. The
distinguished feature of GIMC is that, this controller
architecture has the potential to overcome the conflict
between performance and robustness in the traditional
feedback framework by showing structurally how the
controller design for performance and robustness may be
done separately. This GIMC structure was used as FTC in
[11]-[12] and [13]. In [11] it is applied to gyroscope
system so that to keep stability and performance of
perturbed plant when one of the sensors breaks down. In
[12], it is applied to dc-motor as speed regulation
problem and experimentally shows good performance of
this structure in the case of sensor failure. Moreover,
GIMC has been applied to Magnetic Suspension System
in [13] which is unstable system and experiment was
carried out in the case of sensor failure. These research
works have shown that the GIMC is very useful for
system perturbation. However, all those previous results
are restricted to only minimum phase systems. In other
words, application of GIMC approaches has been limited
to the minimum phase systems. This prohibits applying
the powerful GIMC structure technique into the plants
which are non-minimum phase.
The objective of this paper is to extend the use of
powerful GIMC structure into the case of non-minimum
phase systems. In particular, the paper extends concepts
of GIMC presented in [10]-[11] and [12] into the area of
non-minimum phase systems with eliminating this
limitation in controller design. In this paper, we apply
GIMC structure to quadruple-tank process which has
unstable zeros. Then we utilize the idea of zero-
assignment to place the unstable zeros of the plant in the
stable region [14]. Thus, it will be possible to implement
the GIMC structure on this plant.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes
the problem formulation. Section 3 presents the structure
of the FTC scheme. First the general methodology is
introduced and the extension to non-minimum phase
system is explored. At last, the structured algorithm for
designing FTC is presented. Simulation results on a
quadruple-tank process subjected to the actuator faults are
given in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 makes some
concluding remarks.
M. Pezeshkian*, H. Ozma**, and M. J. Khosrowjerdi***

*M.S. Graduated from Sahand University of Technology of Tabriz,
m_pezeshkian@sut.ac.ir
**M.S. Graduated from Sahand University of Technology of
Tabriz, h.ozma@sut.ac.ir
*** Assistant Professor of Sahand University of Technology of
Tabriz, khosrowjerdi@sut.ac.ir
2011 2nd International Conference on Control, Instrumentation and Automation (ICCIA)
978-1-4673-1690-3/12/$31.002011 IEEE 564
2. Problem Formulation
The objective of this paper is to design FTC to
compensate the faults occurred in the actuators of non-
minimum phase LTI systems. The faults addressed in this
paper are modeled as additive faults. But, in problem
formulation we consider the general system with possible
faults in both actuators and sensors. Consider a system
( ) P s affected by possible faults
l
f R e described by
(1)
1
2
( )
x Ax Bu F f
P s
y Cx Du F f
= + +
= + +

where
n
x R e represents the vector of states,
m
u R e the
vector of inputs, and
p
y R e the vector of outputs. Thus
matrix
1
n p
F R

e stands for the distribution matrix of the

actuator or system faults, and
2
p l
F R

e for sensor faults.

The nominal system ( , , , ) A B C D is considered
controllable and observable. On the other hand, the
system response y can be analyzed in a transfer matrix
form (frequency domain) as follows:
(2) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( s f s P s u s P s y
f u
+ =
where
(3)
1
1 2
( )
( )
u
f
P C sI A B D
P C sI A F F

= +
= +
A left coprime factorization for each transfer matrix can
be derived as follow [15]
(4)
1
1
u
f f
P M N
P M N

=
=
where , ,
f
M N N RH

e and can be obtained as follow

f
M N N (

(5)
1 2
2
.
A LC L B LD F LF
C I D F
+ + +
(
=
(

where matrix
n p
L R

e is such that A LC + be Hurwitz.

Now, it is assumed that a nominal controller K stabilizes
the nominal plant
u
P , and it provides a desired closed-
loop performance. The controller K is considered
observable, and consequently, it can also be expressed by
a left coprime factorization as
(6)
1
K V U

=
where , U V RH

e and

K K
K K
A B
K
C D
=
(
(

(7) | |
K K K K K K K
K K
A L C B L D L
U V
C D I
+ +
=
(
(

The nominal controller can be synthesized following
classical techniques or optimal control: PI , PID ,
2
/ LQG H , H

loop shaping design, and so on. The

proposed scheme for designing fault tolerant controller is
depicted in Figure 1. In this structure, the feedback
system is controlled only with nominal controller
1
K V U

= while there are no faults in the systems. But

when fault occur in any component of the system, the
compensator signal q is activated to attenuate or
compensate the effect of the fault in the closed-loop
system. In next section, the way to how to produce the
compensator signal q based on GIMC structure is
introduced.

Figure 1: The proposed FTC scheme

3. FTC Structure
In previous section, it has been seen that the proposed
FTC structure is based on the production of the
compensator signal q , see Figure 1. In this section, we
introduce the way to construct the compensator signal q
based on GIMC structure.
3.1 Overall FTC structure
Consider the nominal plant
u
P and let K be a linear
stabilizing controller for
u
P . Suppose that K and
u
P have
the coprime factorizations as Equations (4) and (6). Then
every controller K that internally stabilizes
u
P can be
written in the following form:

1
( ) ( ) K V QN U QM

= +
where Q RH

e and det( ( ) ( ) ( )) 0 V Q V = [15]. A

new implementation of the controller parameterization
for producing the compensator signal q is shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2: FTC structure for producing signal q
565
As can be seen from Figure 2
(8) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) s N s u s M s y s u =
In fault detections, this signal is called residual signal,
the difference between the estimated output and the true
output of the system [1]. If system is working in fault free
condition, then 0 u = and the control system will be
solely controlled by the nominal controller
1
K V U

= . In
the other hand, when fault occur in the system, then
0 u = and the compensator signal q will be active to
compensate or attenuate the effect of the occurred fault.
Since the signal u represents the estimated output error
(residual), this signal contains valuable information in
case of a component failure.
Define the following nominal closed-loop transfer
matrices:
i. input sensitivity: ( )
1
i u
S I KP

+
ii. output sensitivity: ( )
1
o u
S I P K

+
iii. complementary output sensitivity:
( )
1
o u u
T I P K P K

+
Lemma 1. In the FTC configuration of Figure 2
considering additive faults, the resulting closed-loop
characteristics for the control signal u and output y are
given by

1 1
( )( )
i i f
u S Kr S V UM Q N f

= +
(9)
1 1
( )( )
o o f
y T r S M I NV Q N f

= +
and the closed-loop system is stable, provided that
Q RH

e .
Proof. From the Figure 1, for signal u we have:
| | | |
1 1
( ) ( ) u V q U r y V Q U r y u

= + = +
| |
1
( ) ( ) V Q Nu My U r y

= +
by substitution of Equation (4) in above equality:

1
f u f
u V QN f Ur UP u UP f

= + (


by some arithmetic operation we can deduce following
equation

( )( )
1 1
i i f
u S Kr S V UM Q N f

= +
by substitution of u from above equation in Equation (2),
signal y can be deduced.
By considering Equation (9), variety of scenarios for
designing the compensator signal q can be introduced.
For instance, for minimizing the fault effect at the sensor
signal, the problem 1 can be expressed:
Problem 1: Consider Figure 2, given 0 > find the
compensator Q such that
fy
T

< .
For solving Problem 1, according to Equation (9),
following optimization strategy is suggested:

1 1
min ( )( )
o f
Q RH
S M I NV Q N f

(10)
min ( , )
L Q
Q RH
F G Q

=
where
Q
G represents the generalized plant given by (see
Figure 3)
(11)
1
0
o f o u
Q
f
S P S PV
G
N

=
(
(
(

In Equation (10),
L
F represents lower Linear Fractional
Transformation (lower LFT). Thus, the problem of
designing fault tolerant controller leads to the problem of
solving a robust control problem that can be handled
easily using standard softwares such as Matlab [17].

Figure 3: LFT framework for compensator Q
In a special case, if the nominal plant
u
P has a stable
inverse, i.e. be a minimum phase system, a complete
output decoupling for faults can be achieved. The
following lemma suggests the best optimal solution to
problem 1, when the nominal plant has a stable inverse.
Lemma 2. If the nominal plant satisfies
u
P ,
1
u
P RH

e ,
then
1
N RH

e , and by considering Equation (9) and

taking
1
Q VN RH

= e , the resulting output signal is

completely decoupled from the faults, that is

1
i f
u S Kr N N f

=
(12)
o
y T r =
Proof. By considering
1
Q VN

= and substituting it in
Equation (9), the Equation (12) can be easily deduced.
Note that the compensation proposed in Lemma 2 is
particularly useful for an actuator or system faults, since
the output is perfectly decoupled from faults. In addition,
the above Lemma is useful when the nominal plant
u
P be
the minimum-phase systems.
In the following sub-section, we introduce a method
to overcome to this weakness and expand the above
lemma to non-minimum phase systems.
3.2 Expansion of FTC to non-minimum phase
systems
566
In this sub-section, our goal is to introduce the
method to assign the unstable zeros of the non-minimum
phase system to the stable region by using the idea of
zero-assignment to overcome the weakness of the Lemma
1 [14]. In this method, we will show that the problem of
zero-assignment problem for state-accessible systems is
equivalent to a pole-placement problem with state
feedback on a reduced-order subspace, which always has
a solution.
Consider the nominal system described by Equation
(1). In this paper, we deal with the actuator or system
faults, so
2
0 F = . And, without loss of generality, assume
also that 0 D = and pair ( , ) A B is controllable. Assume
further that matrix CB is non-singular, i.e. ( ) rank CB m = .
This system is written here for simplicity
(13)
1
x Ax Bu F f
y Cx
= + +
=
It can be shown that there exist an orthogonal matrix
n n
T R

e such that

2
[0 ]
T
TB B =
where
2
m m
B R

e and is non-singular. The matrix T can

be computed via QR decomposition on the matrix B .
By using the coordinate transformation x Tx , the
distribution matrix of the actuator faults
1
F from
Equation (13) has the following structure
(14)
11
1
12
c
F
F TF
F
= =
(
(

In addition, the nominal system described by Equation
(13), when 0 f = , has the following representation
(15)
11 12 1 1
21 22 2 2 2
0
c c
B A
A A x x
u
A A x B x
= +
| | | || | | |
| | | |
\ .\ . \ . \ .
( )
1
1 2
2
x
y C C
x
=
| |
|
\ .
(16)
where
1
n m
R x

e ,
2
m
R x e and other matrices have
appropriate dimension. In addition, the matrix
2
m m
R C

e
is non-singular. Transmission zeros of this system is
given by [14]

1
11 12 2 1
0
n m
I A A C C

+ = .
Define new output for system (15) and (16) as
(17)
1
y y Mx = +
where
( ) n n m
M R

e is a design matrix. Substituting for
1
x and y from Equations (15) and (16) in Equation (17)
yields:
( )
1
1 2
2
S
x
y S
x
S =
| |
|
\ .
(18)
where
(19)
1 1 11
2 2 12
S C MA
S C MA
= +
= +
Now, transmission zeros of the transformed system (15)
with a new output (18) is given by:
(20)
1
11 12 2 1
0
n m
I A A S S

+ =
Equation (20) is equivalent to the pole-placement for
the pair
11 12
( , ) A A with the state feedback matrix
1
2 1 z
K S S

= . It can be easily shown that this pole-

placement problem, and in fact, this transmission zero-
assignment problem have always a solution. For this,
consider the following lemma.
Lemma 3. The matrix pair
11 12
( , ) A A is controllable if
and only if the pair ( , ) A B is controllable.
Proof. Because of the special form of the plant (15) and
using the fact that
2
det( ) 0 B = , it follows that

11 12
21 22 2
[ ]
0
rank sI A B rank
sI A A
A sI A B
=
(
(



| |
11 12
rank sI A A m = + for all s e
This implies

11 12
[ ] [ ] rank sI A B n rank sI A n m = A =
and from the Popov-Belevitch-Hautus (PBH) rank test it
follows that ( , ) A B is controllable if and only if the pair
11 12
( , ) A A is controllable.
By assumption, the pair ( , ) A B

is controllable. Thus
according to Lemma 3 and appropriate selection of the
gain matrix
1
2 1 z
K S S

= , there is always solution to

transmission zero-assignment problem. Therefore, we can
place right half-plane zeros of the plant, if there was any,
in the left half-plane and convert non-minimum phase
system to minimum phase system.
By substituting for
1
S and
2
S from Equation (19) in
the gain matrix
z
K , we have

1
2 12 1 11
( ) ( )
z
C MA C MA K

+ + =
or

11 12 2 1
( )
z z
M A A K C K C =
by appropriate selection of
z
K , the matrix
11 12
( )
z
A A K is
non-singular and we have
(21)
1
2 1 11 12
( )( )
z z
M C K C A A K

=
567
By finding M from Equation (21) and substituting it in
Equation (17), the compensated plant with y as a new
output has transmission zeros placed in an appropriate
place.
Remark. The remarkable notice in this method is that it
is clear that
1
lim ( ) 0 x t = as t . Thus, according to
Equation (17)

lim ( ) ( )
t
y t y t

=

which shows that this method has no impact on closed-
loop system tracking problem.
FTC design algorithm:
Data: given plant with Equation (1)
Assumption: ( , ) A B is controllable and ( , ) A C is detectable

2
0 D F = =
( ) rank CB m =
- Step1) For nominal plant in Equation (1), design
nominal controller to achieve desired performance
- Step2) find left coprime factorization of nominal
plant and nominal controller as Equations (4) and
(5)
- Step3) assume the overall structure of the FTC as
depicted in Figure 2
- Step4) solve Problem 1 and find compensator Q
If the nominal plant was stable and also was minimum
phase, then go to step 10. But if the plant was stable and
non-minimum phase, continue
- Step5) using coordinate transformation T ,
construct
c
F as Equation (14). Furthermore,
transform the nominal plant
u
P

to new coordinate
system as Equations (15) and (16)
- Step6) find
z
K such that the poles of the matrix
11 12
( )
z
A A K is placed in appropriate place
- Step7) find M according to Equation (21)
- Step8) construct the compensated plant (15) and
(18)
- Step9) replace
1
( , , , ) A B F C in Equation (1) with
( , , ) ,
c c c
A B F S and construct new
u
P and
f
P in
Equation (3). Then go to step 2
- Step10) Find the compensator Q as Lemma 2.
The above algorithm is constructive and can be
implemented using standard softwares such as Matlab
[16].

4. Numerical example: the quadruple-tank process
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed FTC
scheme, we consider the quadruple-tank process [17]. A
linearized dynamic model of the quadruple-tank system is
given in the state space formulation as [17]:
( )
0.50 00
0 0.500
0.0159 0 0.0419 0 0.03570
0 0.0111 0 0.0333 0 0.0105
0 0 0.0419 0 0 0.1077
0 0 0 0.0333 0.07280
x x u f
y x
= + +
=

( (
( (
( (
( (

(
(

where
4
x R e is the level of water in each tank,
1 2
( )
T
u u u = is the voltage applied to pumps 1 and 2,
1 2
( )
T
f f f = is the actuator faults associated with pump 1
and 2. The linearized system is stable and transmission
zeros of the system is located at
1
0.1336 z = and
2
0.2088 z = . So the system has one unstable zero that
made it non-minimum phase system. According to
method described in section 3.2, first by coordinate
transformation x Tx , we transfer the system into new
coordinate as Equations (14) and (15). Then, we find gain
matrix
z
K so that to locate the transmission zero of the
system in
1
0.1336 z = , and
2
0.2088 z = . For this, the
calculated M according to Equation (20) is
6.8943 3.2167
4.0387 1.2166
M

(
(

. Now, for the compensated plant
with new output as in Equation (17), implement the
algorithm. For designing fault tolerant controller, we take
the nominal controller K as a H

-controller, which
calculated in [18]. In order to analyze the effectiveness of
the proposed FTC, the actuator fault is applied as
depicted in Figure 4, and also assumed that only the
actuator 1 is faulty. The output of the system with
nominal H

-controller is shown in Figure 5. As shown

in this figure, the output can perfectly track the reference
input. The output of the system with nominal controller
when fault occur in the actuator is shown in Figure 6. As
can be seen, the output cannot track the reference input
properly with the occurrence of the actuator fault. In
Figure 7, the output y by using the proposed FTC
structure has been shown. The simulation was carried out
by assuming fault detections delay of about 2 second. As
shown in this figure, although the open-loop system is
subjected to actuator fault, one can see that the closed-
loop system is internally stable and tracking performance
is accurate. The same results can be achieved with
constant faults (bias) and other kind of time-varying
actuator faults that show the effectiveness and good
performance of the proposed FTC scheme.

Figure 4: Occurred fault in actuator 1
568

Figure 5: Outputs of the system with nominal controller without
actuator fault

Figure 6: Outputs of the system with nominal controller when actuator
fault occur at t=300s

Figure7: Output signals with FTC, when actuator fault occur in t=300s

5. Conclusion
In this paper a robust scheme for designing fault
tolerant controller (FTC) based on Generalized Internal
Model Control structure, and its extension to non-
minimum phase LTI systems is presented. In this scheme,
first the nominal controller is designed to achieve closed-
loop stability and acceptable performance, and then by
correcting the nominal controller based on the idea of
GIMC, a robustification signal is imposed to compensate
the actuator faults. In particular, we extend the concepts
of GIMC into the area of non-minimum phase systems.
The proposed scheme, deals with non-minimum phase
systems by utilizing the idea of transmission zero-
assignment. It has been shown that the problem of zero-
assignment problem for state-accessible systems is
equivalent to a pole-placement problem with state
feedback on a reduced-order subspace, which always has
a solution. At last, a constructive algorithm for FTC
design has been proposed and simulation results on the
quadruple-tank process, which has unstable zeros,
subjected to the actuator fault have shown satisfactory
level of control performance.
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