Reduced Order H∞ Synthesis using a Particle Swarm Optimization Method

Abstract: H∞ controller synthesis is a well known design method for which efficient dedicated methods have been developed. However, such methods compute a full order controller which has often to be reduced to be implemented. Indeed, the reduced order H∞ synthesis is a non convex optimization problem due to rank constraints. In this paper, a particle swarm optimization method is used to solve such a problem. Numerical results show that the computed controller has a lower H∞ norm than the controller computed from a classical Hankel reduction of the full order H∞ controller.