Real‐Time Optimization by Extremum‐Seeking Control (Q4439636)

The book attempts to provide a justification for a method which is used in control systems engineering. A plant contains a parametric uncertainty which is possibly time-varying. A feedback loop is constructed so that the parameter, seen as an input signal, approaches a function which makes a performance cost closely associated to the open-loop transfer function (in the simplest case they coincide) optimal. In this feedback loop one injects a periodic signal (the dither effect; although this is fundamental to the method and a well-known methodology, the authors do not use this word). Then the goal is to establish stability results so that the parameter minimizes the performance (thus the terminology ``extremum-seeking control'' of the title). So the authors try to provide a theoretical justification of the stabilizing nature of the dither effect. This is certainly a highly respectable intention. However, the reviewer does not feel comfortable with the treatment (the confusing mixing of time-varying quantities and frequency dependent ones, the practicality of the way the periodic disturbance is injected, the value of a theorem which transforms the assumptions into sufficient conditions for stability, including checking the stability of an associated periodic linear system; this system is obtained from an equation relating time-dependent (not all periodic; certainly the parametric uncertainty will not be periodic in general) and frequency dependent quantities, but the authors do not say how this realization is obtained and the reviewer cannot believe that this realization is valid). Notice that the study is local and that its advantage is to be independent of a model. The book is structured in two parts: A ``theoretical'' one and applications. First one has the single parameter case, then the multi-parameter situation, the case of a more general performance index, a discrete version, the case when the plant is itself a nonlinear control system (with its own inputs and outputs) and a chapter which considers in the latter case, the occurence of limit cycles and the minimization of their amplitude. The applications are varied (a breaking wheel, a bioreactor, a flight system, combustion, a compressor system) whereby it is not always straightforward to see in what sense the results of the first part are being illustrated. Some calculations are detailed at the end, and one finds finally a bibliography and a small index. The book is not recommended.