European Journal of Control (2010)5:447–496
© 2010 EUCA
DOI:10.3166/EJC.16.447–496
On the Theory and Design of Linear Repetitive Control Systemsg
Richard W. Longman
Columbia University, MC4703, 500 West 120th Street, Room 220 Mudd, New York, NY 10027 USA
This article summarizes developments in linear repetitive
control (RC) that represent an effective overall design
approach, allowing the user to optimize performance. This
involves the design of a compensator, a zero-phase low-
pass filter, and an interpolator. Mathematical background
is developed that justifies and interprets the compensator
frequency domain optimization criterion. The compen-
sator designs can be very effective with a small number
of gains, with fast well-behaved learning. Robustness to
model parameter uncertainties is accomplished by opti-
mizing the cost summed over models, by adjusting the
learning rate as a function of frequency, and by relaxing
the zero error requirement as a function of frequency. The
mathematical background needed is developed for mult-
input multi-output (MIMO) systems, and the generalized
MIMO optimization criterion and solution are presented.
One can also design a set of single-input single-output
designs to handle MIMO systems. Regarding the zero-
phase filter used to robustify to unmodeled high-frequency
dynamics, specially tailored finite impulse response filter
designs cut off or cut down the learning at high frequen-
cies. Interpolation is used to improve performance when
the period of interest is not an integer number of time
steps, and it is shown how to use the designs when there
are multiple unrelated disturbance periods. RC designed
to eliminate periodic measurement error is also presented,
with results from computer disk drives.
Keywords: Cost function averaging over models, FIR
zero-phase low-pass filtering, Higher order repetitive
control, MIMO repetitive control, Multiple disturbance
E-mail: RWL4@columbia.edu
periods, Optimal design in frequency domain, Repeti-
tive control, Repetitive control for periodic measurement
error, Repetitive control robustness, Stability of repetitive
control
1. Introduction
Repetitive control (RC) is a relatively new field within
control theory. The usual RC problem handles three situ-
ations. The RC modifies a feedback control system with
the aim of converging to zero error: (1) when the objec-
tive is to track with zero error a periodic command; (2) or
when the desired output is a constant but there is a periodic
disturbance, and then the aim is to cancel the influence of
the periodic disturbance and get the desired constant out-
put; (3) or it aims to get zero tracking error to a periodic
command in the presence of a periodic disturbance, both
with the same period. This latter situation often occurs
because the observed disturbance is correlated with the
commanded periodic trajectory and hence exhibits the
same period. In practice, one usually must compromise
and ask for zero error up to some chosen frequency cutoff.
Any periodic command can be written as a sum of a
fundamental frequency and all harmonics up to Nyquist
frequency. Anyone who has studied classical control
theory knows how to compute the steady-state frequency
response to each of these frequencies, and knows to
expect the amplitude and the phase to be different from
that of the command. RC aims to fix these errors in
response to commands. And similarly periodic distur-
bances produce a periodic component to the output, and
Received 30 September 2009; Accepted 18 May 2010
Recommended by Hyo-Sung Ahn, D.W. Clarke
448
RC aims to modify the command or the error signal going
into the controller such that the effect on the output is
minus that of the effect of the disturbance. People often
cite [48, 50] at the beginning of the 1980s as originat-
ing the field, and these publications were motivated by
the desire to eliminate ripple in rectified voltage run-
ning magnets in a particle accelerator. Early articles in
the field include [48, 50, 49, 95, 82, 36, 37, 38, 133, 90, 39,
94, 141, 123, 127, 4, 40, 91, 122, 20, 121, 111] from the
1980s. Momentum in the field accelerated in the next
decade.
The sister field of iterative learning control (ILC)
addresses very similar problems and can often make use
of similar techniques. ILC considers control systems that
repeatedly execute a finite time desired trajectory. The
system is reset to the same initial conditions before the
start of each run. The aim is to achieve zero tracking error
at every time step of this finite time trajectory. Hence,
it aims to simultaneously track the command and cancel
any repeating disturbances that occur every run. Unlike
RC where control actions and transients can propagate
from one period into the next, control actions and tran-
sients cannot propagate from near the end of one run into
the start of the next run. This changes the mathematical
conditions for asymptotic stability, or convergence to zero
error. A second difference is that RC asks for convergence
to zero error as the time step tends to infinity, i.e. zero error
during steady-state response to the periodic input and/or
disturbance, while ILC wants zero error of every time step
of a finite time trajectory. Hence it asks for zero error
during the system initial transients. The original motiva-
tion for ILC is usually ascribed to achieving zero error in
robots performing repeated tracking commands. Arimoto
is a key originator and a prolific contributor to the field
starting with his publications [5, 6] published in 1984. To
cite his own words, [12, 23] were similar developments
by others the same year. To this one can add [82] as a
digital RC treatment of the robotics problem. As often hap-
pens, there are precursors. Arimoto cites Uchiyama [129]
published in 1978 motivated by robotics. Also, there is
a recently discovered patent related to ILC dating from
before 1970 [19]. Some basic or overview publications in
ILC include [102, 103, 84, 11, 85, 1, 70]. Reference [70] is
a publication related to this one, which discusses both ILC
and RC in parallel.
Yet a third sister field is what some call multipass
processes. The essential difference between such pro-
cesses and ILC is that the interaction from run to run
comes from the physics of the system rather than being
induced by the control action. In some rough sense, it
lies between ILC and RC because dynamic influences
propagate across the run-to-run boundary. The original
motivation was in coal cutting, and the interaction from
run to run can create an instability. Early works in this
R.W. Longman
field include [27, 28]. Reference [26] gives some basic
models, and the book [29] gives an overview of multipass
processes. Stability theory underlying multipass processes
and ILC appear in [96, 109, 108].
Perhaps the majority of control systems in the world
repeatedly perform the same task, and hence could fall
into one of the above three categories. Also, the vast
majority of feedback control systems in the world are
designed using linear time invariant thinking. This is
true even when the system being controlled is definitely
nonlinear, as in the use of classical control methods to
design controllers for robots. RC and ILC are no excep-
tion. Reference [70] reports ILC results that improved the
tracking accuracy doing a specific maneuver by a factor
of 1000 in 12 iterations. This is near the reproducibil-
ity level of the robot hardware, so it is not possible that
a much more complicated nonlinear ILC design could do
any better. Hence, the author considers that for RC design,
by far the most important material is RC based on linear
time invariant models. And it is this topic that is treated
here.
A short list of RC applications includes the following.
(1) The original application was to eliminate 60 Hz related
fluctuations in the power supply to magnets of a syn-
chrotron accelerator [48, 50]. References [67, 68, 69, 3]
are similarly motivated by 60 Hz disturbances to the
8 GeV electron beam at the Thomas Jefferson National
Accelerator Facility, where the objective is to elimi-
nate beam position fluctuations by learning a corrective
command history. (2) As with ILC, there are many
applications to repetitive tracking motions of robots, for
example [82, 94, 123, 4, 111, 24]. A particularly important
class of applications is to make routine robot feedback
control systems actually perform optimized trajectories.
Reference [60] examines how to pose the problem of
making robots perform maneuvers at high speed, and [61]
considers implementing ILC to make the controllers actu-
ally perform the optimal maneuvers. The same methods
apply to RC problems for robots. (3) A particularly impor-
tant application is to computer disk drives, and to CD
tracking. The tracks on computer disks are written in
while the disk is rotating, and vibrations cause the track
to be not perfectly circular. RC can help the read/write
head track the irregularities with less error, which allows
the tracks to be more closely spaced and the disk to
have more storage. Reference [20] presents experiments
showing the benefits of RC. Reference [45] uses a differ-
ent nonstandard formulation of the problem. It considers
the wiggles in the written in track to be periodic mea-
surement disturbances, and an RC process is created to
learn to ignore such measurement disturbances. This is
much easier for the hardware to do, and hence can give
better results. Reference [93] shows block diagram struc-
tures for eliminating plant disturbances, and structures for
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
eliminating periodic measurement disturbances. The for-
mulation of this kind of RC is presented in Section 16.
(4) References [41–43] use RC to eliminate periodic veloc-
ity errors in a timing belt constant speed paper drive in a
copy machine. Imperfect mounting of the gearing, imper-
fect machining, and tooth meshing geometries, cause
fluctuations in speed, and the RC learns to eliminate
these velocity error sources that degrade image quality.
Also, [44] presents RC results for the lateral position-
ing of these belt drives, and this is again an example
of the nonstandard RC problem of eliminating periodic
measurement error discussed in Section 16. (5) Thickness
control in sheet metal rolling is similarly subject to peri-
odic errors from the hardware involved [34]. (6) Spacecraft
often have spinning wheels on board, such as three reaction
wheels or four control moment gyros as attitude control
system actuators. Slight imbalance in such wheels pro-
duces a vibration of the spacecraft, and one wants to isolate
any fine pointing equipment from these vibrations. Some
experiments are reported in [30, 13, 16]. (7) Noncircular
machining is studied in [127, 128]. (8) There are many
potential applications related to kinematics and mecha-
nisms [22, 105, 106]. Often mechanisms are designed with
the assumption that the input shaft will move at constant
angular velocity, but the mechanism presents a varying
impedance throughout a rotation, producing a periodic dis-
turbance to the speed control system of the input shaft. But
once one opens the door to using RC on the input shaft,
one can address additional issues. For example, if a cam is
inaccurately machined, in some applications one can pro-
duce an RC system to correct for the machining errors by
creating the needed input speed variation. One could go
further, and ask that the RC system adjust the input speed
in such a way that the cam behaves like a different and
better behaved cam shape. References [22, 105, 106] coin
the terms intelligent mechanisms and morphing mecha-
nisms to describe the possibilities of combining RC with
mechanism theory. (9) Reference [57] treats electrohy-
draulic actuators for electronic cam motion generation.
(10) Application to pulse width modulated rectification is
reported in [147]. (11) And pulse width modulated invert-
ers are treated in [145, 146]. (12) RC with shunt active
power filters appears in [25].
2. The Objective and Organization
of this Article
This article presents the author’s preferred approach to the
design of RC systems as developed in a series of publi-
cations. The overall approach aims to produce robust RC
designs, to be practical, and to create as high precision
motion as is practical. One needs to design a compensator,
a zero-phase low-pass filter, and an interpolator.
449
2.1. Compensator Design (SISO)
• The compensator design is a finite impulse response
(FIR) filter that simply requires at each time step that
one create a linear combination of some measured errors
from the previous period. The design is optimized in the
frequency domain as presented in [99] (see Sections 6.2
and 6.3). The choice of order and number of poles to
use at the origin can be guided by [138] (Section7).
• The design need not use an analytical model of
the system. The compensator can be designed based
directly on frequency response tests [97] (Section 6.4).
• If the design uses a model, and the parameters of the
model are uncertain, one can robustify the compen-
sator design to such uncertainties by optimizing the
cost averaged over a set of models [104, 101, 59, 112]
(Section 8).
• If the design is based directly on frequency response
tests, similar averaging of the cost over a set of tests
substantially improves robustness [97] (Section 8).
2.2. Compensator Design (MIMO)
• The above discussion is for single-input, single-output
(SISO) systems. The cost function used can be gen-
eralized to multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) systems,
and the resulting compensator equations are given in
Section 6.5 based on [65] and robustified to parameter
uncertainties as in [10].
• Alternatively, one can in a very straightforward manner
handle MIMO design by making a set of SISO designs
by the above methods [65] (Section 6.6).
2.3. Compensator Design for Multiple Periods
• If the RC problem has multiple unrelated periods, a set
of SISO designs can be combined to handle the situa-
tion as shown in [139, 140] and modified to include the
design process here in [72, 73] (Section 15).
2.4. Zero-Phase Low-Pass FIR Filter Design
• To robustify the design to unmodeled high-frequency
dynamics, a zero-phase low-pass FIR filter is designed
based on [98, 8, 74, 51] (Section 9.1 and 9.2).
• One can choose to make a sharp cutoff, or to limit the
attenuation to just what is needed, possibly involving a
tradeoff based on error distribution [113].
2.5. Interpolator Design
• When the period of the disturbance or the command
is not an integer number of time steps, improved
450 R.W. Longman

performance is obtained by using interpolation [56]

(Section 10.1)
• An alternative is to design a low-pass filter that also
serves the purpose of adjusting for the partial time step
in a period [131, 9] (Section 10.2).

2.6. Compensator Design to Eliminate Periodic

Measurement Disturbances Fig. 1. RC adjusting the command to a feedback control system.

• Similar methods allow one to design RC controllers that

learn to ignore periodic measurement disturbances [45]
(Section 16).
Other sections are added to give underlying theory or
to give perspective. Section 4.1 develops the stability
theory for SISO RC systems as presented in [70]. Then
Section 5 interprets this in a way that justifies the cost func-
tion used for optimizing the compensator designs [142],
showing that it not only aims to satisfy the stability cri-
terion, but it is also justified to think of the compensator
design as optimizing the convergence rate. Section 4.2
presents the stability theory for MIMO and develops the
MIMO analog of the SISO optimization criterion for use in
MIMO design [65]. The remaining sections are as follows.
Section 11 presents some alternative compensator design
approaches, Section 12 discusses how to avoid images
of startup that deteriorate performance [71], Section 13
presents ways to make RC performance more insensitive to
variations of the period [117, 118, 63, 64], and Section 14
discusses the possible bad effects of introducing a Kalman
filter into RC design [100].
3. Choice of RC Structure:
Simultaneously Addressing
Feedback and RC Objectives
Perhaps the first step in making an RC design is to pick
one of three possible block diagram structures to use.
The compensator, zero-phase filter, and interpolator can be
the same for each, but there are some differences in perfor-
mance and implementation. Consider the block diagram
in Fig. 1, where the repetitive controller R(z) adjusts the
command u(kT ) (or U(z) when transformed, k is the
integer time step and T is the sample time interval) to
a feedback control system. Its controller is C(z) and its
plant is P(z), and the aim is to get the feedback control
system output to match the desired output. The desired
output can be periodic, or it can be a constant but there is
a periodic disturbance, or both command and disturbance
are periodic with the same period. The period is p time
steps with p an integer unless otherwise noted, and it is
assumed known. Of course, in the case of a periodic com-
mand, one knows the period. When there is a periodic
Fig. 2. The RC system of Fig. 1 using the feedback control sys-
tem closed loop transfer function G(z) and equivalent periodic output
disturbance V (z).
disturbance, one needs to have a way to have the RC stay
synchronized with it. In practice this may be accomplished
for example, by use of an index pulse each revolution of
a shaft whose rotation is responsible for a periodic distur-
bance, as was done in [41, 42, 43], or by a trigger pulse
on the 60 Hz supply voltage in the case of [3]. Some dis-
cussion of the options available when such a signal is not
available is presented later.
For simplicity, we treat all transfer functions as digi-
tal. One can always refine the analysis in practice, using
digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters in the
appropriate locations and make the needed conversions
to digital. The command is denoted by y∗ (kT ) (or when
transformed Y ∗ (z)). The periodic disturbance most often
comes between the controller and the plant and is given
as V ∗ (z) or v∗ (kT ). The relationship from the command
and the disturbance, to the output Y (z) or y(kT ) can be
written as



C(z)P(z) P(z)
Y (z) = U(z) + V ∗ (z)
1 + C(z)P(z) 1 + C(z)P(z)
= G(z)U(z) + V (z) (3.1)
This defines the closed loop transfer function of the feed-
back control system G(z) and also the periodic output
disturbance V (z) or v(kT ) (use the frequency transfer func-
tion version of the coefficient of V ∗ (z)) that is equivalent to
the periodic physical disturbance V ∗ (z) between controller
and plant. This results in Fig. 2.
The simplest RC law can be written as u(kT ) =
u((k − p)T ) + φe((k − p + 1)). The command to the
feedback control system at the current time step is the
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 451

command one period back plus a RC gain times the error

one period back, but shifted forward by the time delay
through the system. We assume this delay is one step rep-
resenting the number of time steps from a change in the
input until a resulting change in the output appears. A
simple modification can adjust for different delay values.
The error is defined as e(kT ) = y∗ (kT ) − y(kT ). This
law is intuitively appealing: it says that if the output was
Fig. 3. Plug-in repetitive controller.
two units too low at this time in the previous period, then
add two units times gain φ to the command this period
(at the appropriate step). In order to make this simple law
into something practical, we design a compensator F(z)
that filters the error signal, in order to produce stability by
adjusting the phase and perhaps the amplitude as a func-
tion of frequency. In case p is not an integer, so there is
no command decision one period back, and no measure-
ment at the desired time, one can simply use the nearest
integer, or one can interpolate the right hand side between
Fig. 4. RC adjusting the command to the feedback control system but
adjacent time steps. This interpolation, denoted by I(z), modified to include a feedforward command signal.
could be linear interpolation or higher order interpolation.
In order to create robustness to unmodeled high-frequency
dynamics we introduce a zero-phase low-pass filter H(z) the desired trajectory Y ∗ (z) as the command U(z). The
to cut off (or cut down) the learning above some chosen error response to the command and disturbance is
frequency. This filter can be modified to introduce a lin-

1
ear phase change in order to perform the function of the EFB (z) = Y ∗ (z)
interpolation as well as the learning cutoff, in which case 1 + P(z)C(z)
I(z) is not employed. The general form of the RC law is

P(z)
written as − V ∗ (z) (3.5)
1 + P(z)C(z)
U(z) = z−p I(z)H(z)[U(z) + F(z)E(z)] (3.2) The transfer functions presumably do something reason-
ably good in responding to commands and in attenuating
or in transfer function form disturbances. The RC is introduced to more specifically

 target error having a specific period. Now introduce the
I(z)H(z)F(z) RC as in Fig. 1 or 2 and the equation becomes
U(z) = R(z)E(z); R(z) = (3.3)
zp − I(z)H(z)

1
E(z) =
We will use this form of RC throughout this article, 1 + G(z)R(z)
but one may want to use one of two different block dia- 
 
gram structures as in Figs. 3 and 4, as discussed in [66]. ∗ P(z) ∗
× Y (z) − V (z) (3.6)
Fig. 3 presents the structure for a “plug-in” repetitive con- 1 + P(z)C(z)
troller [24, 82], which goes inside the feedback control
loop to find the error signal, and modifies it with the RC If instead one uses either Fig. 3 or 4 the result is
law R(z). All RC laws need access to the feedback mea-
 

1 1
surement information, but going into the feedback loop E(z) = Y ∗ (z)
to get access to the error signal could be harder to do in 1 + G(z)R(z) 1 + P(z)C(z)
hardware. In that case, one can get the same performance
 
P(z)
by using the RC law − V ∗ (z) (3.7)
1 + P(z)C(z)

U(z) = R(z)E(z) + Y ∗ (z) (3.4)
in place of (3.3) as in Fig. 4. The differences between the
performance of these RC block diagram structures can be
seen as follows. First, consider the performance of the
feedback control system alone without RC, when given
One can easily see that Figs. 3 and 4 should have the same
results by examining the signal that enters the controller
C(z), which is equal in each case. In deriving the results
it may be helpful to remember that G = PC/(1 + PC)
and therefore PC = G/(1 − G). The difference between
(3.6) and (3.7) is that in the first case the command comes
452
Fig. 5. Magnitude frequency response of the sensitivity transfer func-
tion from command to error for model (3.8) and repetitive control
structure of Fig. 2. (12 gain FIR design, solid φ = 1, dashed φ = 0.1.)
through as if the feedback controller were not there, and
in the second, what the feedback controller would do
to the command is present and then operated on by the
RC action. If the command is always a constant, or peri-
odic with period p time steps, then there is no difference
between the performance of the three RC structures.
To get some better understanding of the RC transfer
function in the first parentheses on the right side of these
equations, consider the simplest RC law again, in which
case this factor is equal to (zp − 1)/[(zp − 1) + φzG(z)].
When multiplied by a signal with period p time steps, the
result is zero, as the numerator simply shifts the signal
one period and then takes a difference. If the gain φ is
made very small, then at other frequencies the factor will
be close to unity.
To illustrate this, consider the third-order transfer
function

  to eliminate, and one wants to apply command signals that
a ω02
G(z) = (3.8)
s+a s2 + 2ζ ω0 s + ω02
which is a reasonably good model of the command
to response of the control systems for each link of a
Robotics Research Corporation robot [32]. The constants
are a = 8.8, ζ = 0.5, and ω0 = 37. Suppose that it is
fed by a zero-order hold running at 100 Hz sample rate.
Then Fig. 5 gives the magnitude frequency response from
command to error (the sensitivity transfer function) for
the structure in Figs. 1 and 2, using the recommended
RC design method [99] optimizing a 12 gain FIR filter to
approximate the inverse of the steady-state feedback con-
trol system frequency response (for the entire system in
this case). The solid line is the result of simply using the
design, which automatically assigns the gain, which we
write as φ = 1. The dotted line is the result of multiplying
R.W. Longman
Fig. 6. Same as Fig. 5 but using RC structure of Fig. 3 or Fig. 4.
the FIR filter by the gain φ = 0.1, and we see that the
error is zero at the bottom of the notches corresponding
to the fundamental frequency of the chosen period, and
at all harmonics to Nyquist frequency. Between these fre-
quencies the error is very close to one, meaning the RC is
not responding to commands at other frequencies. Fig. 6
gives the corresponding plot for the RC structure in either
Figs. 3 or 4. The envelop of the dashed curve is very close
to the magnitude frequency response of the feedback con-
trol system alone. The small error at low frequencies is
the objective of most feedback control systems, and this
small error is preserved when the RC law is included in the
manner of these two figures. By using a gain smaller than
φ = 0.1, one can make the dotted curve come arbitrarily
close to the feedback control curve, but with the notches
for the addressed frequencies of period p time steps. More
detail can be found in [66].
The conclusion is that if one has a periodic disturbance
are not constant and not periodic with the chosen period,
then one should implement the RC structure in Fig. 3 or 4.
And by picking a small enough RC gain, one can make
the RC system behave arbitrarily close to the behavior
of the feedback control system alone when treating these
commands. Hence, one can then simultaneously have the
benefits of feedback control for more general commands,
and the benefit of RC for eliminating the influence of
periodic disturbances.
4. Stability Theory of RC Systems
The stability theory presented here for both SISO and
MIMO systems necessarily involves some detail. Read-
ers primarily interested in design methods for RC, upon
first reading can simply note Theorem 2 (or Theorem 4 for
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
the MIMO case), then read the first paragraph of Section 5,
and go on to compensator design in Section 6.
4.1. The Stability Boundary, and the Stability
Boundary for All Periods p in SISO Systems
From the block diagram in Fig. 2, we can write the error
in terms of the desired output and the disturbance as
[1 + RG]E = Y ∗ − V , or equivalently
[(zp − I(z)H(z)) + I(z)H(z)G(z)F(z)]E(z)
= (zp − I(z)H(z))[Y ∗ (z) − V (z)) (4.1)
Once cleared of fractions, this can be considered a differ-
ence equation, with each power of z corresponding to a
shift forward by one time step in the time domain function
it multiplies. The right hand side represents a forcing func-
tion. Note that if no cutoff filter is used and no interpolation
is needed, then the first factor on the right is (zp −1) which
corresponds to shifting the functions Y ∗ and V forward by
one period and then subtracting the unshifted functions.
This comes out zero when these are periodic with p, and
there is no forcing function under these conditions. Stabil-
ity of the equation, as always, is determined by the solution
to the homogeneous equation whose characteristic poly-
nomial is the numerator in the square brackets on the left,
multiplying the error. If all roots are inside the unit circle,
then the error will converge to the steady-state particular
solution associated with the forcing function. And in the
case just discussed when the forcing function is zero, the
error converges to zero.
There are various ways of examining the stability of a
system, but RC can push each approach to its limit because
of the high degree of the characteristic polynomial. Here,
we present an approach that for most applications cir-
cumvents the difficulty of dealing with a high-degree
characteristic equation.
One’s first thought in studying stability is to simply find
the roots of the characteristic polynomial. This may be
possible, but the value of p can be very large, for exam-
ple in a problem with a one second fundamental period
when sampling at 1000 Hz, it is 1000. For sufficiently
high-degree polynomials, one should not trust any root
finding algorithm. And similarly it is unmanageable to
use such tests as the Jury test. Consider using the standard
Nyquist stability criterion, and for simplicity consider the
case where I(z)H(z) = 1. Then one must evaluate the left
side of R(z)G(z) = −1, i.e.
G(z)F(z)
R(z)G(z) = p (4.2)
z −1
for z going around the Nyquist contour shown in Fig. 7.
The smaller radius is going around the unit circle, and the
453
Fig. 7. Nyquist contour going around p poles on the unit circle.
larger radius must be at infinity. Unfortunately, there are
p poles on the unit circle (indicated by dots in the figure),
and as in the case of using the Nyquist contour with an
integral controller in continuous time, we have to modify
the contour as indicated to make a half circle around each
such pole on the stability boundary, avoiding having the
contour go through these poles. The result is that the plot
of (4.2) will go to infinity, go 180◦ around at infinity, and
then come back to the unit circle p times while moving z
around the unit circle. Again, this is impractical. There is a
method of performing a Nyquist analysis that works with
the reciprocal of (4.2) as in [114, 107], but this method also
has computational issues. Here, we present the method
from [70, 46] which bypasses most of the computational
difficulty.
Before developing the approach, consider the follow-
ing heuristic logic. Because stability is a property of the
homogeneous equation, set the right hand side of (4.1) to
zero and rearrange terms to obtain
zp E(z) = {I(z)H(z)[1 − G(z)F(z)]}E(z) (4.3)
One is tempted to consider the term in curly brackets as a
transfer function from one period to the next, and then after
substituting z = exp(iωT ) it becomes the frequency trans-
fer function. Then it would appear that if one requires that
the magnitude of the frequency transfer function satisfy
|I(z)H(z)[1 − G(z)F(z)]| < 1 ∀ z = eiωT (4.4)
the magnitude of all frequency components of the error
(actually the error transients that satisfy the homoge-
neous equation) would decay from one period to the
next, suggesting asymptotic stability. This logic is flawed
454
because the frequency transfer function applies only in
steady-state response to sinusoids, and in steady state the
E(z) has become zero (if the RC system is stable) because
the error we are talking about is the solution to the homo-
geneous equation. Hence, from the arguments presented
here, we can only say that the magnitude on the left hand
side of (4.4) for a given frequency ω is an estimate of the
decay in amplitude from one period to the next under a
quasi-static assumption, i.e. that the decay rate is so slow
that we can approximate the response in each period as if
it were in steady state. We will see in Section 5, that this
estimate of the decay of the transients is in fact quite good,
and is even good when the quasi-static assumption is very
much violated. It is shown below that condition (4.4) is a
sufficient condition for stability of the RC system.
Now we continue with the development of the stability
boundary for RC. Rewrite the square bracket term in (4.4)
set to zero in the form
1 − z−p I(z)H(z)[1 − G(z)F(z)] = 0 (4.5)
Once this is put over a common denominator, the numera-
tor polynomial represents the characteristic polynomial of
the RC system, whose roots we are interested in. Start with
z = 1 on the Nyquist contour in Fig. 7 and proceed once
around the contour in the clockwise direction as indicated
by the arrows, computing the complex number on the left
hand side of (4.5). Note that this time there are no poles on
the unit circle so that it is unnecessary to deal with the small
half circles. For example, if p1 is a root of the numerator
outside the unit circle as shown, then the numerator can be
factored and will contain z−p1 whose phase angle θp1 will
increase by 360◦ as z goes around the contour (angle mea-
sured as positive in the counterclockwise sense). Phase
angles of multiplicative factors add together. Hence, for
every root of the characteristic polynomial outside the unit
circle, the phase angle of the left hand side of (4.5) will
increase by 360◦ . It would decrease by 360◦ for every root
of the denominator outside the unit circle, but we assume
that the poles of G, F, H, and I are all inside the unit circle
as are the poles at the origin, so the denominator has no
influence on the total phase change. Then, if the angle of
the complex number represented by the left hand side of
(4.5) returns to its original angle after z goes once around
the contour, there are no roots of the numerator outside the
unit circle, and the RC system is asymptotically stable.
The “1” on the left in (4.5) is inconvenient because
it makes the numerator and denominator have the same
degree, and then one must consider the image of the part
of the contour at infinity. Instead, define
Pc (z) = z−p I(z)H(z)[1 − G(z)F(z)] (4.6)
and count how many times it encircles the point +1 in the
counterclockwise direction as z goes around the contour,
R.W. Longman
to obtain the number of roots of the RC system character-
istic polynomial outside the unit circle. Let us assume that
p is sufficiently large that the degree of the denominator in
(4.6) is greater than that of the numerator. Then the part of
the contour at infinity all maps to the origin, and the branch
cut along the negative real axis can be ignored. Hence, one
can simply examine (4.6) for z on the unit circle, i.e. one
can look only at the frequency response. We can state the
result as a theorem.
Theorem 1: Consider a scalar transfer function G(z) and
a scalar repetitive controller R(z) of the form in (3.3).
Suppose that all poles of G(z), R(z), F(z), H(z), I(z) are
inside the unit circle, and suppose that p is sufficiently
large that there are more poles than zeros in (4.6). Then,
if the plot of (4.6) for z going counterclockwise around the
unit circle does not encircle the point +1, the RC system
is asymptotically stable for the value of p used in (4.6).
Then all solutions of the homogeneous part of the dif-
ference equation (4.1) will decay to zero. In practice, one
is likely to want an RC system that is stable for all possible
periods of disturbance or commands. Suppose that (4.4)
is violated for some frequency, going out of the unit circle
for some frequency. Then one can always pick a value of
p in (4.6) to spin the phase of the plot so that +1 is encir-
cled. (Note that if the violation is for z = 1 which has zero
phase, one can still encircle +1 because violation at z = 1
implies violation in a neighborhood of this zero angle, and
hence there exists p sufficiently large to spin the phase and
encircle the point +1.) Hence, we conclude the following.
Theorem 2: A necessary and sufficient condition for
asymptotic stability of the RC system for all possible val-
ues of period p is that inequality (4.4) be satisfied for all
frequencies ω from zero to Nyquist frequency.
Note that as the period p changes, the interpolation
transfer function changes, and one would then like to pick
an interpolator with the property that |I(eiωT )| ≤ 1 for
all ω. This property holds for linear interpolation and cubic
interpolation.
Inequality (4.4) is therefore a sufficient condition for
stability when p is specified, and is a necessary and
sufficient condition for stability for all possible periods p.
We further claim that there is very little point in con-
sidering any RC law that does not satisfy Theorem 2, but
does satisfy Theorem 1 for the desired period p. This is dis-
cussed in detail in [70]. The phase of the zp = exp(ipωT )
term in (4.6) for ωT going from zero to π at Nyquist fre-
quency, rotates fast. If p is 100 for a one second period
at 100 Hz, the phase of this factor reaches 50 revolutions
at Nyquist. This means that for reasonable values of p,
the extra freedom when satisfying Theorem 1 compared
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 8. The stability boundary of Theorem 1 for a first-order system
for various values of period p and aT .
to Theorem 2 is of no practical significance. This is illus-
trated in Fig. 8 from [114], which considers a first-order
system as in the first term on the right of (3.8), and uses
the simplest RC law described below (3.1). The Kmax is
the maximum value of gain φ for stability according to
Theorem 1, and it is given as a function of the value of p,
and of aT . Note that when p increases the stability bound-
ary soon becomes essentially independent of p. Note also
that the reciprocal of aT is the time constant of the system
measured in sample time steps, and one would certainly
like to have a sample time sufficiently fast so that there are
at least 5 or 6 steps per system time constant. And in this
range the curves are even closer together.
4.2. Stability Theory for MIMO RC Systems
Now consider how the above stability results generalize to
MIMO systems. Consider that each line between blocks in
Fig. 2 is replaced with a double line with arrow, indicating
that there are multiple signals being transmitted between
the blocks and summing junction. Suppose that there are
q components in the output vector Y (z) that one wants to
track q desired output histories Y ∗ (z), and hence the error
vector E(z) is also q dimensional. In order to be able to do
this at every time step, one needs at least q components
in U(z), and for simplicity we will consider that there are
exactly q components. This makes G(z), R(z) into q × q
transfer function matrices. The material presented in this
section comes from [65].
4.2.1. Heuristic Development of a Stability
Condition
Observe that the development of equation (4.3) still applies
when converting the problem to MIMO. We can generalize
the nonrigorous heuristic arguments above and below (4.4)
455
that created equation (4.4), for the MIMO problem.
Make the same quasi-static assumption of the frequency
response, and then consider the square bracket term in
(4.3) with z replaced by exp(iωT ), as a matrix of frequency
transfer functions from one period to the next. Consider
for the moment that all q components of the E(z) on the
right of (4.3) have frequency ω, and create a vector of
their amplitudes ᾱI , and make the corresponding vector
of the amplitudes of the product on the right, ᾱO . Con-
sider the Euclidean norm of each vector, and note that
they are related by the induced norm of the square matrix,
which is the maximum singular value of that matrix for
the chosen ω. Hence,
ᾱO 2 ≤ σmax {I(eiωT )H(eiωT )[1 − G(eiωT )F(eiωT )]}
× ᾱI 2 (4.7)
Then the generalization of (4.4) for monotonic decay of
the error vector amplitude from period to period according
to this heuristic argument is
σmax {I(eiωT )H(eiωT )[1 − G(eiωT )F(eiωT )]} < 1 ∀ ω
(4.8)
Of course, one can use any other norm and induced norm
pair to create an analogous condition. One can also substi-
tute the Frobenius norm in place of the maximum singular
value as discussed below. Below we will prove that satis-
fying (4.8) is a sufficient condition for asymptotic stability,
and we will develop the conditions for the actual stability
boundary.
4.2.2. The Necessary and Sufficient Condition for
Asymptotic Stability in MIMO Systems
For simplicity of presentation, consider the case when
H(z) and I(z) are both set to unity. The results with-
out these assumptions will be stated later. We make the
following assumptions:
(i) The denominator characteristic polynomial for G(z)
has all roots inside the unit circle. If G(z) is a feed-
back control system transfer function matrix, this
assumption should be automatically satisfied.
(ii) The same assumption is made for the denominator
of the compensator transfer function F(z) (and H(z)
and I(z) when included). Note that F(z) need not be
causal.
(iii) The value of p is sufficiently large to make the RC
system causal, so we require the denominators of
all transfer function entries in (4.6) for the MIMO
problem, have a higher degree than their numerators.
(If this is not the case, one can always use 2p as the
period.)
456
Rewrite equation (4.1) for the MIMO case in the form
E(z) = −(1−z−p )[z−p (I−G(z)F(z))−I]−1 [Y ∗ (z)−V (z)]
(4.9)
and note that the inverse can be written in terms of the
adjoint as
adj[z−p (I − G(z)F(z)) − I]
[z−p (I −G(z)F(z))−I]−1 =
det[z−p (I − G(z)F(z)) − I]
(4.10)
Then
det[P(z)]E(z) = −(1 − z−p )adj[P(z)][Y ∗ (z) − V (z)]
(4.11)
P(z) = [z−p (I − G(z)F(z)) − I]
The determinant has both a numerator and a denominator
polynomial. The numerator polynomial is the characteris-
tic polynomial of the MIMO RC system, and if all its roots
are inside the unit circle, then the system is asymptotically
stable.
As before we use the principle of the argument and the
contour in Fig. 7, and because there are no poles on the
unit circle, there is no need for the semi-circles around
poles on the unit circle. And, instead of working to
find the numerator polynomial, consider working with
det[P(z)]. After substituting z on the contour into P(z),
one has a complex matrix that can either be diagonalized
or put in Jordan canonical form by a similarity transfor-
mation at each frequency. Denote either of these forms
as , whichever is needed. Then P(z) = NN −1 . The
determinant of a product of matrices is the product of
determinants when defined, and because NN −1 = I,
det N −1 = 1/ det N. Then
det[P(z)] = det[(z)] = λ1 (z)λ2 (z) · · · λq (z)
= r1 eiθ1 r2 eiθ2 · · · rq eiθq
= (r1 r2 · · · rq )ei(θ1 +θ2 +···+θq ) (4.12)
The RC system is asymptotically stable if the sum of angles
θ1 + θ2 + · · · + θq comes back to its original value when
z goes once around the contour. To simplify the process,
define a new matrix and note the relationships between the
determinants according to
P∗ (z) = [z−p (I − G(z)F(z)] = P(z) + I (4.13)
det[P∗ (z)] = det[N −1 P∗ (z)N]
= det[N −1 P(z)N + N −1 N] = det[ + I]
= (λ1 (z) + 1)(λ2 (z) + 1) · · · (λq (z) + 1)
R.W. Longman
In this new form, the RC system is asymptotically stable
if the angle of the line from the point −1 to the com-
plex number det[P∗ (z)] relative to the positive real axis,
comes back to its original value after z does one traversal
of the contour. Making this shift assists in the evaluation
of stability by allowing one to only consider the part of the
contour that moves z around the unit circle. By the assump-
tions above, there are more poles than zeros in P∗ (z), and
therefore the part of the contour at infinity always maps to
the origin. And the branch cut just supplies a line to the
origin and back, going along the real axis starting from the
image of z = −1. Hence, one only needs to consider z on
the unit circle corresponding to frequency response. The
result can be stated as a theorem for MIMO analogous to
Theorem 1.
Theorem 3: The MIMO RC system using compensator
F(z) and satisfying the assumptions above is asymptoti-
cally stable if and only if the plot of
det[z−p (I − G(z)F(z))] (4.14)
does not encircle the point −1 as z goes around the unit
circle once. Equivalently, the angle made between the pos-
itive real axis direction and the line from −1 to the complex
number represented by (4.14) must come back to its orig-
inal value (not modulo 2π ) when z goes once around the
unit circle.
4.2.3. Sufficient Conditions for Asymptotic
Stability of MIMO RC Systems
As in the SISO case one is interested to have conditions
that guarantee stability independent of the period p. The
Frobenius norm of a square matrix is the square root of
the sum of squares of all elements and its square can be
written as A2F = tr(AH A) where superscript H indicates
conjugate transpose. Another measure of interest is the
spectral radius ρ(A) equal to the largest absolute value of
all eigenvalues of the matrix A. One can show (e.g. [65])
that these are related according to
AF ≥ σmax (A) ≥ ρ(A) (4.15)
We can generate a series of sufficient conditions for
stability. For z on the unit circle, the absolute value of the
determinant in (4.14) simplifies to the determinant with-
out the z−p as this factor has magnitude unity on the unit
circle. Therefore, if the determinant in (4.14) is less than
unity without this factor for all frequencies up to Nyquist,
then −1 cannot be encircled, and this forms a sufficient
condition for asymptotic stability. To create a second suffi-
cient condition, replace this determinant by the product of
the eigenvalues following (4.12) and it becomes clear that
keeping the magnitudes of all eigenvalues less than unity
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
is also a sufficient condition. Then using (4.15) develops
two more sufficient conditions, each more restrictive than
the former. These results are summarized in the following
theorem, which includes a stability condition that is the
MIMO version of that in Theorem 2.
Theorem 4: For a MIMO RC system satisfying the
assumptions above, all of the following are sufficient con-
ditions for asymptotic stability. In addition, satisfying any
one of these conditions guarantees asymptotic stability for
all possible periods p.
 
 
det[(I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))] < 1∀ω (4.16)
ρ((I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))) < 1∀ω (4.17)
σmax ((I − G(e )F(e ))) < 1∀ω
iωT iωT
(4.18)
 
 
I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ) < 1∀ω (4.19)
F to zero. The characteristic polynomial is obtained from
tr (I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))(I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))H
of the polynomial is given by nRC = p+nG +nF +nH +nI
= tr (I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))H (I − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ))
< 1∀ω (4.20)
Each of these equations is more restrictive than the pre-
vious equation, except that (4.20) and (4.19) are identical.
Note that equation (4.18) says that the heuristically derived
monotonic decay condition of equation (4.8) is rigorously
a sufficient condition for asymptotic stability.
If we reintroduce H(z), I(z), Theorems 3 and 4 can be
easily generalized. Then P∗ (z) in (4.13) is replaced by
z−p {I(z)H(z)[I − G(z)F(z)]}, and the (I − GF) factors in
equations (4.14) and (4.16) through (4.20) are replaced by
IH(I − GF).
5. Evaluating the Learning Speed in RC
Section 6 designs compensators that minimize the square
of the left hand side of (4.4) summed of a chosen set
of discrete frequencies between zero and Nyquist. Obvi-
ously this directly aims to satisfy the stability condition
of Theorem 2. Heuristic arguments said that this left hand
side represents the factor by which different frequencies
decay each period. However, that conclusion requires
making a quasi static assumption, i.e. one must assume
that the learning is very slow. This section is devoted to
showing that the left hand side is actually a very good
approximation of the decay rate of different frequency
components even when the learning is very fast [142, 143].
Hence, the cost function used in the next section is
also designing compensators that have optimized learning
457
rate. If desired one can later slow down the learning by
introducing a gain multiplying the repetitive control law.
In classical control system design, asymptotic stability
is not enough. One wants to know how fast the transients
decay, and one wants to know that the decay behaves
in an acceptable manner. The heuristic condition (4.4)
applied to equation (4.3) suggests monotonic decay of
the amplitude of every frequency component of the error.
And condition (4.8) applied to equation (4.7) suggests
monotonic decay of the amplitude vector norm for every
frequency from zero to Nyquist, using the same quasi static
assumption. We examine what is required for this assump-
tion to be valid. First, consider the settling time of an RC.
5.1. The Settling Time
Settling time is a property of the homogeneous difference
equation obtained by setting the right hand side of (4.1)
the numerator of the square bracket term on the left after
putting all terms over a common denominator. The degree
where the degree of the denominators of G, F, H, and I
are included with the number of time steps in a period, p.
Assume that there are no repeated roots, and the associated
roots are zj ; j = 1, 2, . . . , nRC . Then the general solution
of the homogeneous equation takes the form
e(kT ) = C1 z1k + C2 z2k + · · · + CnRC znkrc (5.1)
where the Cj are arbitrary constants determined by the
initial conditions from the first nRC time steps, which
includes the first period of operation of the RC before there
is any data from a previous period to use in the RC law.
The time constant of an exponential e−αt is the amount
of time needed for the exponential to decay to e−1 of its
original value, given by 1/α. One definition of the settling
time of a system is four times the longest time constant for
any solution of the homogeneous equation, corresponding
to e−4 = 0.018, or the amount of time for the slowest
decaying exponential to decay to 1.8% of its original value.
This is a worst case analysis. It is possible that the solution
that decays the slowest is associated with very small initial
error, and in such a case the overall decay rate can seem
faster than predicted.
The decay of the solutions in (5.1) every time step is
given by the magnitudes rj of the roots zj = rj exp(kϕj ).
If j is the value for the largest root magnitude, then the
settling time can be found by solving rjk = exp(−αkT ) =
(exp(−αT ))k for α. The result can be written in three
forms
ts = −4T / ln rj tss = −4/ ln rj tsp = −4T /(p ln rj )
(5.2)
458
The first gives the settling time in seconds, the sec-
ond in units of time steps, and of particular importance
is the third, which gives the settling time in units of peri-
ods. Since one is trying to learn to get zero error in a
periodic situation, it is natural to examine how many peri-
ods one needs for learning before the process has settled.
Reference [143] illustrates that as the period increases,
the settling time in periods relatively quickly approaches
an asymptotic value, i.e. an asymptotic number of peri-
ods. Fig. 9 considers the third-order system of (3.8) and
uses the compensator design of [122] (discussed below).
This cancels the poles and zeros inside the unit circle, and
places a zero at the reciprocal location to the zero outside,
and puts a pole at the origin. Then the DC gain of the
compensator times the system is set to unity. The sample
rate is 100 Hz, the period is set to eight time steps. The
settling time is given in time steps, and plotted vs. the
gain φ. When the gain is unity, the settling time is roughly
15 periods. Fig. 10 considers the same system using a
10 gain FIR compensator design using the recommended
method of [99], and the settling time is one period and a
Fig. 9. Settling time in time steps vs. learning gain for third-order
system with p = 8, using a phase cancellation approach.
Fig. 10. Settling time in periods vs. period in time steps for the third-
order system using a 10 gain FIR compensator design.
R.W. Longman
fraction once the period is longer than the settling time of
the feedback control system.
5.2. The Learning Rate for Each Frequency
Computation of the settling time requires finding all of the
roots of the characteristic equation, and this could be diffi-
cult numerically for large periods p. Also, the settling time
is based on the decay with time of the slowest decaying
solution to the homogeneous equation.
A different approach looks at the frequency response.
We return to the heuristic arguments below equation (4.3)
suggesting that the magnitude of the frequency transfer
function in square brackets
[I(eiωT )H(eiωT )(1 − F(eiωT )G(eiωT ))] = M(ω)eiγ (ω)
(5.3)
given by M(ω) is the change in the amplitude of the fre-
quency component of the error at frequency ω from one
period to the next. Frequency transfer functions describe
steady state frequency response to a sinusoidal input.
There is no such input in the equation. And since it applies
to steady state, the equation rigorously applies only after
convergence, and therefore cannot be describing the decay
of the error E(z). Making the quasi static assumption then
says M(ω) is the amount of decay in a period provided
there is very little decay. However, experience shows
that the condition is a much better predictor of decay
rates than this thinking would suggest. Reference [142]
explains this phenomenon as follows.
For purposes of illustration, consider the simplest form
of RC described below (3.1), where F(z) = φz, and apply
it to a first-order system G(s) = 8.8/(s + 8.8) fed by a
zero-order hold input running at 100 Hz, and converted to
the equivalent G(z). Then the open loop transfer function
of the RC system has one system pole and p poles on the
unit circle. When the gain is φ = 0, the roots are at these
poles, and as it tends to infinity one root goes to the zero
introduced by the one step lead in the error term of the
RC law, and all others go to infinity. Fig. 11 shows the
root locus plot when p = 8 and also indicates the root
locations associated with gain φ = 1. This is a natural
gain for a G(z) with DC gain of unity, since it corrects DC
error immediately.
The value p = 8 is very small for a realistic practical
problem. When p is increased to 40, the root locus plot is as
shown in Fig. 12. Note that 40 is perhaps still a small num-
ber in practice, if one wants good fidelity at representing
the desired periodic trajectory with zero error at this many
points. We note that as the number of time steps increases,
the radial distance to the roots from the origin, for gains
associated with asymptotic stability, becomes much closer
to unity. One should expect this because the learning
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 11. Root locus plot for first-order system using the simplest RC law
and period p = 8.
Fig. 12. Same as Fig. 11 except p = 40.
process needs to see a full period before it can react to
the error at each time step of a period, and this means the
learning rate must in some way scale with the number of
time steps in a period (as discussed above). The important
property to note here is that the root locus for the p poles
on the unit circle do not penetrate very far into the unit
circle, and hence have magnitudes rather near unity.
Each complex root to the homogeneous equation
in (4.1)
zjk = (rj )k eikϕj
= (rj )k cos((ϕj /T )kT ) + (rj )k sin((ϕj /T )kT )
is associated with a radian frequency ϕj /T . When φ = 0
this frequency is precisely that of one of the poles on the
unit circle, either DC, fundamental, or a harmonic. As φ is
increased to a value that might be chosen in the RC design,
the root is still close to this frequency as in Fig. 12. Hence
we can associate each root with one of these frequencies.
459
Fig. 13. Comparison of M(ω) (solid line), (rj )p (circles), (rj ) (pluses),
and system pole (square), for p = 8.
The amplitude associated with this frequency that is cre-
ated by the initial conditions is associated with the constant
Cj . Hence, we can examine the values of the root magni-
tudes rj associated with each integer i multiple of 2π/p
from zero up to Nyquist, for the poles around the unit
circle. Note that the arguments above make M(ω) an indi-
cator of the amount of decay of the frequency component
of the error for ω, observed over one period. In other words
one should compare the M(ω) with the associated (rj )p .
Fig. 13 gives this comparison for p = 8, and we see that
the circles corresponding to the actual decay rate of each
root over a period (rj )p , and the M(ω) curve already for
this low value of p lie close to each other. Note that the
approximate monotonic decay condition from period to
period from (4.3) knows nothing about the system poles,
and hence the decay rate of the system pole indicated
by the square in Fig. 13 is not captured by this approx-
imate decay condition. Fig. 14 presents the results when
p = 40, and we see that the M(ω) prediction of learning
rate is now an essentially perfect indicator of the decay
rate of the initial error components.
Fig. 15 presents results using a 10 gain RC law designed
by the method of [99] discussed in Section 6.2 (design-
ing a 10 gain FIR filter to minimize the square of M(ω)
summed over a discrete set of evenly space frequencies
from zero to Nyquist) for the third-order system of (3.8)
with 100 Hz sample rate. Both the approximate monotonic
(5.4) decay condition, as well as the roots of the characteristic
equation, indicate that this design learns very fast. In one
period the error at all frequencies is decreased by a factor
of much more than 90% for nearly all frequencies. One
expects that such fast learning would surely violate the
quasi static assumption needed in the development of the
approximate monotonic decay condition. But nevertheless
the results are quite good.
460
Fig. 14. Same as Fig. 13 except that p = 40.
Fig. 15. Figure corresponding to Fig. 13 for the third-order system
with p = 40 using a 10 gain compensator design using the method
of Section 6.2 (with V = 0).
Fig. 16 gives the corresponding plot using the method of
Tomizuka et al. [122] described below, with the asymptotic
zero location of −3.73 in place of −3.31 that corresponds
to this sample rate. The settling time is 0.45 sec for the
feedback control system G(z) alone, and p = 40.
To understand how one can dramatically violate the
quasi static assumption and still have good predictions
of decay rate, write the characteristic polynomial that is
satisfied by root zj in the form
p
zj = [I(zj )H(zj )(1 − F(zj )G(zj ))] (5.5)
or
 p  
(rj )p = zj  = I(zj )H(zj )(1 − F(zj )G(zj )) (5.6)
We conclude that the difference between the two predic-
tions of the decay rate of the transients is based on one
R.W. Longman
Fig. 16. Plot for third-order system using the compensator design
method of [19] for the asymptotic zero location outside unit circle for a
pole excess of 3.
substituting values of z for the poles on the unit circle, and
the other substituting zj from the roots of the characteristic
polynomial into the right hand side of (5.6). If the roots
are still relatively close to the poles on the unit circle as
in Fig. 12, then the approximations can be good. Looking
at the roots in Fig. 11 indicated by the crosses, they are
near one in magnitude. Consider the first cross at about
0.95. Then the left hand side of (5.6), which indicates the
actual learning rate for the associated frequency compo-
nent, is 0.95 to the 40th power which is 0.008, suggesting
that this is the change in the error for this frequency after
one period of 40 time steps. If the period were changed
to 80 time steps, the value becomes 0.00006486. So the
roots can be near the unit circle and still correspond to a
fast learning rate in periods.
We conclude that the approximate monotonic decay
condition is a very good indicator of the learning rate per
period for each frequency component of the error, pro-
vided p is a reasonably large integer as is usually the
case in applications. And as a result we can use it for
optimization of the RC design.
5.3. The Phenomenon of Initial Convergence
Followed by Divergence
In classical control system design one can normally use
the concept of phase margin to determine stability. This
concept relies on the usual property that the magnitude
response of the open loop transfer function continues to
decay after it passes the zero dB crossing point where the
phase margin is defined. RC is very unusual because it
asks for zero error for all signals of a given period, and
this means the fundamental and all harmonic, all the way
to Nyquist frequency. The result is that the open loop
magnitude response plot has many zero dB crossing points,
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 17. Polar plot of F(z)G(z) for a phase cancellation RC design for
the timing belt drive system.
and one must have good knowledge of the system phase
all the way to Nyquist.
This is actually unreasonable in the practical world, and
as a result we need to use a zero-phase low-pass filter H(z)
to cut off the learning when the model is no longer good
enough. Examining equation (4.3) without such a filter
and without any interpolator, one can see that an effec-
tive design for the compensator F(z) is to either try to
invert G(z), and if not that, then it should try to cancel
the phase of G(z). One can succeed in doing this when
one has a good model, but at high frequencies one must
expect some extra un-modeled dynamics, often called par-
asitic poles or residual modes. One extra un-modeled pole
in continuous time puts in an extra 90◦ phase lag at high
frequencies, and in discrete time approaching Nyquist it
may add 180◦ . This is enough to make condition (4.4) vio-
lated. And by equation (5.3), it will be error components
at these high frequencies that are amplified by M(ω) every
period. However, at very high frequencies, the magnitude
response of the system can be very small. The result is
that without H(z), one should expect essentially all RC
systems to be unstable, but the growth rate of the instabil-
ity may be very long. Reference [43] gives an example of
RC of paper velocity in a copy machine that required about
2000 periods before evidence of an instability started to
become apparent. Fig. 17 from [41] is a polar plot of the
product F(z)G(z) obtained from experimental frequency
response data for the timing belt drive system. If the plot
goes outside the unit circle centered at +1, then (4.4) is
violated (with I(z)H(z) eliminated). This system started to
show instability after about 80 iterations. The plot does in
fact go outside the unit circle, but one needs a magnifying
glass to see this. The radial distance from +1 to the plot is
M(ω). The RC law used was computed as a convolution
sum operator that cancelled system phase, and then it was
truncated to make an FIR filter (based on the ILC approach
of [31]).
461
In practice, this type of instability is very often
observed, i.e. the RC is turned on and the error decreases
for some time, perhaps dramatically, and then slowly the
error starts to grow again. An understanding of this phe-
nomenon is given in [75] and it is also discussed in [70].
First, we evaluate the frequency content of the initial error
that is to be fixed by the RC action. The first period of
an RC system is running just a feedback control system
and establishes the initial conditions for the RC difference
equation. It can have relatively small error remaining for
very low frequencies, the main error is a little higher in fre-
quency, and then errors at very high frequency are usually
very small. A sizable amplitude at high frequency requires
high energy, and natural disturbances will not have such
energy. Also, in applications the command is often a con-
stant, and otherwise one expects the periodic command to
concentrate on frequencies perhaps up to and a bit beyond
the bandwidth of the control system, but to stay far below
Nyquist frequency.
Starting from this error spectrum, the frequencies with
substantial error are in a range where the model is rea-
sonably good, and the RC makes the error learn relatively
quickly. But there are very small errors at high frequency
where the model is not good enough, and M(ω) goes
above unity as a result. Because these errors are at a fre-
quency far above the bandwidth of the system, the M(ω)
is only slightly above unity, and hence these errors grow
very slowly. Now apply superposition of the errors at all
frequencies, and the sum of all errors decreases quickly
initially, and then eventually the small errors with the small
growth rate start to become evident. The H(z) cutoff filter
can be introduced to stop this growth, tuning the cutoff
frequency in hardware based on the frequency content of
the error that is observed to be growing.
5.4. Perhaps You Do Not Need Stability
As discussed in [76, 77], this phenomenon of what appears
initially to be convergence often being followed by diver-
gence offers an unusual option in control theory. It may be
ok to use an unstable RC system. One applies the RC law
and monitors the error as a function of period, e.g. compute
the root mean square of the error for the past period for each
new time step, and once it is clear that the error has gone
through a minimum, go back to the RC command to the
feedback controller that was applied at the minimum, and
simply use that as the command to the feedback controller
from then on. One turns off the RC action, and freezes the
signal as the one that produced the smallest error.
Some form of learning is applied for a number of revo-
lutions for each track on computer disk drives. This is done
at the factory, and the resulting control action is recorded
on the disk for use thereafter whenever reading the track.
There is no need to be certain that the RC system is stable
462
in such an application. Hence, using an unstable RC can
quickly improve tracking error and allow more closely
spaced tracks.
Whenever one learns an RC signal and then freezes it
for future use, one pays a price in final error lever reached.
RC and its sister field, iterative learning control, rely on
looking at the error in a previous period or run and acting
on it assuming it will appear again in this run if no changes
are made. Therefore, the minimum possible error one can
hope to achieve, is to approach the reproducibility level of
the hardware. Iterative learning control experiments on a
robot [32] reached a level perhaps a factor of 3–5 above
this reproducibility level measured on a minute-to-minute
basis, but this level was far below the reproducibility level
when measured on a day-to-day basis. Thus, the learning
control was fixing errors of the size of how differently the
robot behaves from one day to the next. If one chooses to
freeze the RC signal, one gives up this potential for correct-
ing errors that vary with time. This includes such things as
errors changing as a machine warms up. On the other hand,
getting a very substantial improvement in performance by
simply making a few runs and computing an improved
command to an existing feedback control system, is very
attractive.
6. RC Compensator Design: Using
Optimization in the Frequency Domain
Theorem 2 established that for asymptotic stability for all
possible p, one needs to make the M(ω) in equation (5.3)
less than unity for all ω. This M(ω) contains the cutoff
filter H(z) and the interpolation I(z). If one wishes the
error to be eliminated up to as high a frequency as pos-
sible, then one designs the compensator F(z) to satisfy
(5.3) without the cutoff, based on one’s model of the sys-
tem. Then when applying the resulting design to the real
world, one most likely needs to introduce the cutoff filter
to stabilize the process to high frequency model error. The
cutoff would be tuned based on the hardware performance
with this design. Hence, in designing F(z) we may aim
to satisfy M(ω) less than unity for all frequencies, with
H(z) removed. Similarly, it is reasonable to leave out I(z)
as well. It is a low-pass filter also whenever the period
does not happen to be an integer number of time steps. We
conclude that in most cases our objective in the design of
the compensator F(z) should be to satisfy
 
MGF (ω) = 1 − G(eiωT )F(eiωT ) < 1 (6.1)
for all frequencies up to Nyquist, based on our system
model. This section presents a recommended approach to
the design of the compensator F(z) based on minimizing
the square of MGF (ω) summed over a suitably dense set
of discrete frequencies from zero to Nyquist [99, 97, 65].
R.W. Longman
There are some exceptions to making the sum go all
the way to Nyquist frequency. These include lack of con-
fidence in the model above some frequency [97], or we
know in advance that we want a cutoff at some frequency
based on hardware considerations [41], or when we are
using a simple RC law that is not capable of meeting this
requirement with our model, and we adjust its parameters
to get the best cutoff possible (e.g., the linear phase lead
design discussed below).
6.1. Usually One Cannot Use the Inverse as a
Compensator
One might first think of using F(z) = G−1 (z), in which
case (6.1) is satisfied, and the learning should be immedi-
ate after one period. This is usually not possible, because
when a continuous time system is fed by a zero-order hold,
and the equivalent z-transfer function is generated, usu-
ally there are zeros introduced, and these are often outside
the unit circle. This makes the inverse of most discrete
time systems unstable. Generically, when one changes the
input to a zero-order hold feeding a differential equation,
one will see a change in the sampled output one time step
later. Thus the discretization process introduces enough
zeros into the z-transfer function that there is one less zero
than pole. The zeros introduced lie on the negative real
axis (with frequency components at Nyquist frequency).
When the pole excess in the differential equation is three
or more, then at least one zero will be introduced outside
the unit circle for fast enough sample rates. Reference [7]
develops the locations of the zeros introduced in the limit
as the sample time interval T tends to zero. An alternative
proof is presented in [62]. For pole excesses of 3 and 4, one
zero is introduced asymptotically located at −3.732 and
−9.899, respectively. For a pole excess of 5, two zeros are
introduced at −23.322 and −2.322. In RC we have the lux-
ury of using an interpolating hold instead of a zero-order
hold or an extrapolating first-order hold. We are using data
from the previous period so we know both past and future
points for the interpolation. Reference [62] shows that
the same asymptotic locations apply to this case as well,
but the pole excess for which these numbers apply, are
one integer larger. Fig. 18 shows the location of the zero
tending to −3.732 as a function of the sample rate, for the
third-order system in equation (3.8). Only at unreasonably
low sample rates is the zero inside the unit circle. Hence,
use of the inverse of the z-transfer function will usually
create an unstable compensator, and produce an unstable
RC design.
6.2. FIR Design for SISO Systems
What can be done without any such issue of instabil-
ity is to make F(eiωT ) approximate the inverse of the
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 463

work. Of course it is a special case of cost function

(6.3) obtained by picking Wj appropriately. But use of
Wj set to unity often gives very good results. The VC
term is included in case one wants to limit the size of the
gains. Let G(exp(iωj T )) = MG (ωj ) exp(iϕG (ωj )). Then
substituting (6.2) into the cost function (6.3) produces
a set of linear equations to solve for the compensator
gains, Ax = b, where x is the column vector of the ai
coefficients, and

N
A= Wj MG2 (ωj )
j=0
 
1 + VC cos(ωj T ) L cos((n − 1)ωj T )
 cos(ωj T ) 1 + VC L cos((n − 2)ωj T )
Fig. 18. Location of zero introduced outside unit circle by discretization ×



for third-order system (3.8). M M O M
cos((n − 1)ωj T ) cos((n − 2)ωj T ) L 1 + VC
frequency response of the system G−1 (eiωT ). This section (6.4)
summarizes the approach to doing this presented in [99].
Pick F(z) in the form of an FIR (finite impulse response)  
cos((m − 1)ωj T + ϕG (ωj ))
filter  
N
cos((m − 2)ωj T + ϕG (ωj ))
b= 
Wj MG (ωj )  
F(z) = a1 zm−1 + a2 zm−2 + · · · + am z0 + · · · .. 
j=0  . 
an−1 z−(n−m−1) + an z−(n−m) cos((m − n)ωj T + ϕG (ωj ))

= (a1 zn−1 + a2 zn−2 + · · · + am zn−m + · · ·
+ an−1 z1 + an z0 )/z(n−m)
In application this represents taking a simple linear com-
bination of past error measurements. Considered as a
transfer function, it contains n zeros whose locations are
to be chosen, and n − m poles are introduced at the ori-
gin. The z0 term corresponds to the error one period back,
e((k − p)T ), and terms are included both forward and
backward from this time step. The coefficients in (6.2) are
picked to minimize the square of MFG (ω) summed over an
appropriately chosen discrete set of frequencies ωj from
zero to Nyquist, i.e. minimize
N
J= [1− G(eiωj T )F(eiωj T )]Wj [1− G(eiωj T )F(eiωj T )]∗
j=0
+ VC (a12 + a22 + · · · + an2 )
When the objective is simply to approximate the inverse
of the frequency response of the system over the full
frequency range, one sets VC = 0 and sets the Wj
to one. We set VC = 0 unless otherwise stated. Note
that based on the previous section, one might think to
make F(eiωT ) approximate G−1 (eiωT ) by making a cost
that is a similar sum over frequencies of the magni-
tude squared of their difference. This does not usually
The resulting designs (with VC = 0 and all Wj = 1),
when given the needed freedom by appropriate choice
(6.2) of n and m, produce various patterns for the optimized
zero locations of the compensator F(z). It will approxi-
mately cancel the system poles with zeros. It must supply
enough poles at the origin to make the sum of the num-
ber of poles inside the unit circle equal to the number of
zeros inside the unit circle, otherwise the design will fail
to keep MGF (ω) < 1. To see this, note that one additional
zero inside will create a factor whose phase is 180◦ when z
reaches Nyquist frequency at z = −1. Zeros either inside
or outside the unit circle will be compensated by includ-
ing additional zeros approximately symmetrically located
around circles about the origin of the same radial distance
as the zero being compensated.
Numerical experience suggests that the minimum num-
ber of gains to produce stability is equal to the order of
the system. For the third-order system of (3.8), use of
(6.3) three gains with VC set to zero in (6.3) gives the results
in Fig. 19. The polar plot of F(eiωT )G(eiωT ) stays within
one unit of +1 so that MGF (ω) < 1 and the RC system
is asymptotically stable. The locations of the two zeros of
the compensator are shown in the right part of the plot as
are the poles and zeros of G, except that the zero at −3.52
is off the plot. Use of one gain as in the simplest form of
RC is not able to stabilize a third-order system with a rea-
sonable sample rate. It is interesting to note that one only
needs three gains to successfully stabilize such a system.
464 R.W. Longman

Fig. 19. Plot of F(eiωT )G(eiωT ), left, and of the poles and zeros of F(z)G(z), right, for third-order system using three gains in F(z).

Fig. 20. Pole-zero map for third-order system (3.8) for n = 8, m = 3 (left), and for n = 8, m = 4 (right).

When making a compensator design by this method,

one can pick a value of n to use, and then one must vary
the choice of m to find the best value. If one picks n = 8,
then use of m equal to 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all produce sta-
ble designs. The corresponding pole-zero locations for
F(z)G(z) are given in Figs. 20–22. Consider the m = 3
plot in Fig. 20. The third-order system (3.8) fed by a zero-
order hold at 100 Hz has three poles inside the unit circle,
one zero inside and one outside on the negative real axis.
The design has n − m = 5 poles at the origin. Add this to
the three system poles and there are eight poles inside
the unit circle. Then there must be eight zeros inside,
one of them is a system zero, and the seven others are
introduced as zeros of F(z). Three are used to approxi-
mately cancel the system poles. Therefore, there are four
more zeros introduced inside, and these are placed approx- Fig. 21. Pole-zero map for third-order system (3.8) for n = 8, m = 5.
imately evenly spaced around a circle of the radius of the
system zero. Because all possible zeros for n = 8 have The right side of Fig. 20 sets m = 4 so that the number of
already been allocated, there are no zeros introduced out- poles at the origin is now n − m = 4. Therefore, there will
side to compensate the effect of the system zero outside. be one less zero introduced around the circle of approxi-
Hence, the locations of the remaining zeros have been mately the radius of the system zero inside, and it is now
adjusted to try to compensate the influence of this zero necessary to introduce a zero outside the unit circle to reach
outside. eight zeros total. This zero is introduced approximately
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 465

Fig. 22. Pole-zero map for third-order system (3.8) for n = 8, m = 6 (left), and for n = 8, m = 7 (right).

evenly spaced around a circle of the radius of the sys-

tem zero outside. In this case, this means place a zero on
the positive real axis symmetrically located. Fig. 21 sets
m = 5 and needs one more zero outside, and one less
inside. The result is that both the zero inside and the zero
outside have a total of three zeros on the circles of their
radius. The pattern continues in Fig. 22 for m = 6 and 7.
In order to pick among these candidate designs, one might
look at the value of the square root of J in equation (6.3)
(with VC set to zero, N was set to 180 for these runs) which
produces 3.65, 1.05, 0.35, 0.73, and 2.86 for m from 3
to 7, respectively. We see that having the same number of
repeats of the zero inside and the zero outside is best in
this case. Section 7 develops methods of predicting how
many repeats one should aim for. When the zero outside Fig. 23. Plot of F(eiωT )G(eiωT ) for n = 8, m = 5.
and the zero inside have reciprocal locations the analysis
in Section 7 suggests the same number of repeats, and
this reciprocal relationship is approximately true for this
system. The reciprocal relationship becomes exact asymp-
totically as the sample time interval T tends to zero. When
the zero is closer to the unit circle, either inside or outside,
one should repeat it more times around its circle.
This type of RC compensator design can be very effec-
tive. Fig. 23 plots F(eiωT )G(eiωT ) for the 8 gain design
with m = 5. The radial distance from +1 to the plot rep-
resents the learning rate per period M(ω). It is clear that
use of just eight gains times eight errors from the previous
period, can produce an F(z) that is a very good approxi-
mation of the inverse of the frequency response of G(z).
Going to 12 gains produces the results in Fig. 24 which
deviates from the actual inverse of the frequency response
Fig. 24. Plot of F(eiωT )G(eiωT ) for a 12 gain design n = 12, m = 7.
function by roughly only 1%. The performance of such
designs in terms of the settling time has already been pre-
sented in Fig. 10 for a 10 gain design, and we see that the Cost function (6.3) has the option of introducing a
settling time for reasonable periods is one period and a nonzero weight VC that penalizes the use of large gains.
fraction. The settling time of the feedback control system Fig. 25 shows both the polar plot of F(eiωT )G(eiωT ) and
(3.8) alone, is approximately 0.45 seconds, or 45 sample its magnitude and phase plots, for the case of all Wj = 1
times. The learning rate per period for each frequency is and VC = 0.000005 with n = 12, m = 7. The effect
given in Fig. 15. of introducing VC is to decrease the gains by a factor
466
Fig. 25. Introducing a penalty on the size of the gains.
of roughly 10 at the expense of slower learning at high
frequencies [99].
6.3. The Two Choices, FIR or FIR With
IIR Cancellation
One has two choices in how to use the design method of
cost function (6.3). To illustrate the choices in a simple
manner, consider a G(z) of the form
KG (z − zI )(z − zO )
G(z) = (6.5)
(z − p1 )(z − p2 )(z − p3 )
This could have come from (3.8) fed by a zero-order hold,
which introduces one zero zI inside the unit circle, and one
zero zO outside. The system is assumed asymptotically
stable, so all poles are inside the unit circle. As presented
above, we design the FIR compensator F(z) using (6.3)
to approximate G−1 (z), i.e. to approximately make the
frequency response of G(z)F(z) equal to unity in magni-
tude and zero phase. The FIR form of F(z) allows it to
put zeros over the poles inside the unit circle if (6.3) so
chooses, which it approximately does. But all poles must
be at the origin, so it is not possible for F(z) to put a pole
underneath zI , even though such a pole would be stable.
The alternative is to split the compensator into two parts,
F(z) = F1 (z)F2 (z), where
(z − p1 )(z − p2 )(z − p3 )
F1 (z) = (6.6)
KG (z − zI )
is an infinite impulse response (IIR) difference equation
that comes from inverting everything that is stably invert-
ible. Then F2 (z) is designed using (6.3) to approximate
1/(z − zO ), i.e. substitute for G(z)F(z) in (6.3) the expres-
sion (z − zO )F2 (z) and design an FIR filter F2 (z). The IIR
filter is nonstandard as it wants future inputs to compute
the forcing function, but we know “future” inputs (as they
come from the previous period) so one can compute
R.W. Longman
the forcing function at each step and run the difference
equation.
Fig. 26 examines the resulting design for F2 (z) when
one designs it to compensate one zero located at z = −a
outside the unit circle, so that F(z)G(z) in (6.3) becomes
(z + a)F2 (z). The design simply repeats the existing zero
the allowed number of times evenly spaced on the original
zero’s radius. The outer circle on the left of Fig. 26 corre-
sponds to n = 2 (with no pole needed at the origin for these
problems), which puts one zero on the positive real axis at
the symmetric location. The inner circle repeats the exist-
ing zero every 90◦ around the circle (n = 4). The radius of
the circle for n = 2 is (1/a)2 , and for n = 4 is (1/a)4 . By
looking at the corresponding magnitude and phase plot on
the right of Fig. 26, we see that the polar plot on the left
goes around the outer circle once when going from zero
to Nyquist frequency, while for n = 4 it goes around two
times. Section 7 uses a different approach that helps one
determine how many times one should repeat the zero, i.e.
how many gains one should use, in order to reach a cho-
sen level of error in representing the frequency response
of 1/(z − zO ) by the FIR filter F2 (z).
6.4. Design Directly From Frequency Response
Tests Without Producing a Model
The optimization criterion (6.3) seems to require knowl-
edge of the transfer function of the feedback control
system, G(z). However, what is actually used is
G(eiωT ) = MG (ω)eiθG (ω) (6.7)
which is the magnitude MG (ω) and phase θG (ω) frequency
response information. One can experimentally determine
the Bode plots for one’s system, and hence it is not
necessary to create a model.
Reference [97] (and [104, 101]) studies this option
in detail. The system (3.8) is used, and simulated data
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 26. FIR compensator for a single zero outside the unit circle.
Fig. 27. Simulated experimental phase determination by different methods (left). True phase modulo 2π and identified phase using 5000 data points
(right).
generated using a rich deterministic input (a known ran-
dom white Gaussian signal with unity standard deviation),
and then white Gaussian noise is added to the resulting
output data. The standard deviation of the deterministic
output signal is computed and the measurement noise is
then added to give a signal to noise ratio of 100. A total of
5000 data points are used. The smooth line in the left plot
in Fig. 27 is the actual system phase lag as a function of
frequency. The lowest curve is the result of computing the
phase by taking the ratio of the discrete Fourier transforms
of the output divided by that of the input for each frequency
and looking at the phase. The much better irregular curve
is generated by the method of [134], which employs an
averaging technique to improve the results. Phase error
is particularly important in stability, a phase error of 90◦
will send plots such as Figs. 17, 19, 23, 24, and 25 outside
the unit circle centered at +1 and make the RC system
unstable. The right plot in Fig. 27 gives the actual phase
as a dashed line, and also shows the same curve shifted by
±2π . The irregular curve uses the method of [134] and
an unwrap code is used to try to adjust the modulo 2π to
make a curve without 2π jumps. It is clear that with noise
in the data, such unwrap codes will fail to get the right
value of 2π at higher frequencies, and hence make it diffi-
cult to know up to how high a frequency one can trust the
(6.8)
467
data. Nevertheless, it is still clear that one must make use
of a zero-phase low-pass filter cutoff, as discussed below,
since one is not able to get accurate phase information all
the way to Nyquist. Of course, this is also necessary when
using a model, but the inaccuracy in the “model” is more
obvious using frequency response data here.
6.5. MIMO Systems
This section presents material developed in [65] and also
presented in [10]. Theorem 4 above develops a series of
conditions that are sufficient conditions for stability of
MIMO RC systems. One might consider trying to pick
gains in a compensator (6.2) to minimize the left hand side
of any one of the stated inequalities. But doing a minimiza-
tion of the maximum eigenvalue magnitude or maximum
singular value can be complicated numerically. The sta-
bility criterion that is the MIMO analog of cost function
(6.3) is (4.19) or equivalently (4.20). These represent
quadratic objective functions and produce linear equations
to solve for the RC compensator gains in F(z), as described
below.
Write the MIMO compensator equation in the form
F(z) = M̄(z)
468 R.W. Longman

where consider a two input, two output system with trans-

  fer function matrix G(z). Our objective is to design an
M̄(z) = zm−1 I zm−2 I · · · z−(n−m) I (6.9) F(z) whose frequency response looks like that of G−1 (z).
  Then
= a1T a2T · · · anT  
g11 (z) g12 (z)
Then the cost function analogous to (6.3) is G(z) = (6.13)
g21 (z) g22 (z)

N
 1
J= Wj tr [I − G(zj )M̄(zj ) ]H G−1 (z) =
j=1
g11 (z)g22 (z) − g12 (z)g21 (z)
 
 −g12 (z)
× [I − G(zj )M̄(zj ) ] z =e(iωj T ) + tr( T VC ) ×
g22 (z)
j
−g21 (z) g11 (z)
(6.10)

Superscript H represents the conjugate transpose. Tak- Therefore, our objective is to pick, for example, the f11 (z)
ing the derivative with respect to matrix and setting component of F(z) to imitate the frequency response of
the result to zero produces a linear set of equations g22 (z)
to solve for these compensator gains. To assist in tak- (6.14)
g11 (z)g22 (z) − g12 (z)g21 (z)
ing the derivative, note that: (1) tr(AB) = tr(BT AT )
for any matrices A and B. (2) Define the deriva- and similarly for the three other components. This makes
tive of a scalar J̄ with respect to a matrix B, as the four separate SISO design problems, one for each input-
matrix whose α.β component is ∂ J̄/∂Bαβ . (3) Note output pair. As noted earlier, it is not usually effective to
that ∂[tr(AB)]/∂B = AT . And (4) note also that try to minimize the difference between f11 (z) and (6.14).
∂[tr(BT AB)]/∂B = (A + AT )B. Then, if we con- Instead, one should make the product of f11 (z) and the
sider J̄ = tr[(I − GM )H (I − GM )] the derivative reciprocal of (6.14) closely match unity, i.e. minimize
becomes
N 

 
g11 (z)g22 (z) − g12 (z)g21 (z)
d J̄/d = −[(GM)T + (M H GH )] J11 = 1− f11 (z)
g22 (z)
j=1
+ [(M H GH GM) + (M H GH GM)T ] (6.11) 
 ∗ 
g11 (z)g22 (z) − g12 (z)g21 (z)
Introducing the summation, the weight factor Wj , and the × Wj 1 − f11 (z)
g22 (z)
VC term, produces the solution = A−1 B where (6.15)


N
for z = exp(iωj T ). Note that different terms can have
A= Wj [Re(M̄ H (zj )GH (zj )G(zj )M̄(zj )) different numbers of zeros introduced in the discretization
j=1 process, so there can be a different number of zeros outside
the unit circle.
+ Re(M̄ H (zj )GH (zj )G(zj )M̄(zj ))T ] + 2VC (6.12)

B= Wj Re(G(zj )M(zj ))T + Re(M H (zj )GH (zj ))
j=1
Of course, this design approach can design MIMO RC
systems directly from frequency response tests, as dis-
cussed in the previous section. Refer to [10] for examples
of designing MIMO RC using (6.12).
6.6. MIMO Design as a Set of SISO Designs
An alternative design approach for MIMO systems makes
use of a transfer function matrix model and reduces the
problem to solving a set of SISO designs by the methods
of previous sections, as presented in [65]. For simplicity,
7. RC Compensator Design: Using
Taylor Expansions of the Transfer
Function Inverse
This section presents a different design method [138], one
that looks at G−1 (z) and makes a Taylor series expansion
of any factor in the denominator that one wants the zeros
of F(z) to mimic. This is a valid RC design method, and it
is very simple. It also supplies considerable understanding
of why the compensators in Figs. 20–22 behave the way
they do. But perhaps its biggest benefit is to produce a
guide as to how many times one needs to repeat a zero for
a given level of accuracy in modeling the reciprocal of the
frequency response of G(z).
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 469

For simplicity of illustration, consider again the third- For a similar zero zI = −a, 0 < a < 1 inside the unit
order system (6.5). The inverse can be written grouped in circle, we use (7.3) by writing
two ways

 
 
  1 1 1 1 1 1
(z − p1 )(z − p2 )(z − p3 ) = = =
G−1 (z) = z − zI z+a z 1 + (a/z) z 1 + ẑ
KG
   (7.6)
1 1
× (7.1) This time ẑ = a/z and the series converges provided
z − zI z − zO
   |z| > a as needed. Note that this expansion supplies poles
−1 (z − p1 )(z − p2 )(z − p3 ) 1 at the origin. Suppose that r = 2, in which case the expan-
G (z) = (7.2)
KG (z − zI ) z − zO sion becomes 1 − a/z + (a/z)2 = (z2 − az + a2 )/z2 . This
supplies two poles at the origin, and one more from the
The former applies when we design F(z) of equation (6.2)
first factor on the right in (7.6) supplies another, so that the
to mimic all of G−1 (z). In this case we make Taylor series
total number of poles at the origin is equal to the number
expansions of the two last terms to approximate each term
of zeros inside the unit circle (which we know is required
by a set of zeros. The three factors (z − pi ) are then also
for our problem), two from the numerator above, and one
zeros of F(z). In the second form, the first term in square
from the original zero zI of G(z).
brackets is F1 (z) as before, and then we only need to use
When there are multiple zeros at different radial dis-
a Taylor expansion of the last square bracket in (7.2). We
tances from the origin, it is of interest to determine what
will consider only the zeros introduced on the negative
values of r to use for each so that there is a similar accu-
real axis, so that −zI and −zO are positive real numbers.
racy in representing the reciprocal factors. The magnitude
The same methods of course work on more general zeros  r+1
as well. of the error in (7.4) is ẑ , and we are interested in fre-
quency response with z on the unit circle, so that for a
The Taylor expansion needed is  r+1
inside and outside respectively, we have eiωT /a =
 ∞  iωT r+1
1 1/ |a| r+1
and a/e  = |a| . Suppose we set the
r+1
= 1 − ẑ + ẑ2 − ẑ3 + · · · = (−ẑ)k (7.3)
1 + ẑ desired accuracy level to a value ε, and then compute
k=0
the value of r necessary, then r + 1 = ln(1/ε)/ ln a and
 
which converges if ẑ < 1. Suppose that we select all r + 1 = ln ε/ ln a = ln(1/ε)/ ln(1/a) respectively. Note
terms up through power r in the infinite sum, and discard that as the zero location approaches the unit circle, the
the rest. This forms an approximation of the factors of number of repeats of the zero needed for a given level of
interest in (7.1) and (7.2). Note that when multiplied by accuracy tends to infinity. Fig. 28 plots a from 1.025 to
the corresponding factor 1 + ẑ in the numerator of G(z) 5 and from 0.1 to 0.975. An interesting property of the
we get the following simple expression equations and the plots is that the number of repeats for a
given error level for an a outside and an a inside are the
[1 + ẑ][1 − ẑ + ẑ2 − ẑ3 + · · · + (−ẑ)r ] = 1 − (−ẑ)r+1 (7.4) same if the two a values are reciprocals of each other. And
the asymptotic locations of the zeros introduced by the dis-
So the error in canceling the zero by the expansion through cretization obey this reciprocal location. This observation
power r is (−ẑ)r+1 . The roots of the last expression on the suggest we should expect Fig. 21 to be the best between
right are evenly spaced around the unit circle in the ẑ plane, Figs. 20–22.
starting at −1 and separated by 2π/(r + 1) radians. The optimization (6.3) does not exactly place the zeros
For a zero zO = −a outside the unit circle with a > 1 as suggested by the Taylor expansions made here. Never-
we apply (7.3) by using theless, one expects that the results here are a good guide

 
  to picking m in the design using (6.3) so that the error
1 1 1 1 1 1 level is minimized for a given n, and also as a guide to
= = =
z − zO z+a a 1 + (z/a) a 1 + ẑ picking the n necessary for a desired error level. To see
(7.5) the difference between the two approaches, consider a
system consisting of one zero outside the unit circle at
The series converges provided |z| < a, and our interest z = −2, and set the values of n and m, and the num-
is in z on the unit circle which is within the radius of ber r so that 1, 3, 7, and 15 zeros are introduced by both
convergence. The resulting compensator supplies r roots methods (Wj = 1, VC = 0). Fig. 29 shows the resulting
around a circle of radius a, and when combined with the zero locations. Of course, the Taylor series method of this
original zero at −a there are r + 1 roots evenly spaced on section places these extra zeros evenly spaced on a circle
this circle starting as −1. of radius 2. From the top left figure we see that the zero
470 R.W. Longman

Fig. 28. Number of repeats vs. zero location a for given error levels.

Fig. 29. Zero locations of F(z)G(z) when compensators are allowed to use 1, 3, 7, and 15 zeros.

introduced by (6.3) is at a radius somewhat larger than 2. 8. RC Compensator Design: Cost

From the top right we see that the zeros introduced by
(6.3) are not evenly spaced. These differences do improve
performance. And from the lower plots we see that as the
number of repeats gets large, the zero locations of the (6.3)
method approach that of the Taylor series. When consider-
ing a zero inside the unit circle, (6.3) instead uses a shorter
radius, but the angular spacing of the zeros is similar.
Averaging Over Model Distributions
for Robustification to Model Parameter
Uncertainties
There are two kinds of robustness to consider in RC. One
is robustness to inaccuracy of the parameters in the model
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 30. Left: RC design based on the average of frequency response data. Right: RC design that minimizes the sum of the cost functions obtained
for each of the 10 data sets.
used to design the RC law, which is the topic of this section.
The second is the inevitable presence of unmodeled high
frequency dynamics in the system, which is handled by
the methods of the next section.
As an example, we might consider that the coefficients
a, ωo , ζ in (3.8) are uncertain, and we pick what we con-
sider to be the most probable value or average value, but
we might specify a range of uncertainty and a probability
distribution over that range. Normally, one would design
the RC law using the average values or the most likely val-
ues. However, our RC laws are designed based on a cost
function, and the average of the cost function over the dis-
tribution does not correspond to the design for the average
values of the parameters. The relationship is nonlinear.
Reference [104] (and also [101, 59, 10, 119]) shows how
one can dramatically improve the stability robustness of
the design. Pick a representative set of samples from the
probability distributions of all parameters. Then design
one RC control (6.2) to minimize (6.3) summed over all
models in this set. Refer to [104, 101, 59] for investiga-
tions of the robustness improvement. Reference [10] gives
examples for MIMO problems.
An analogous approach can significantly improve the
RC designs obtained when designing directly from fre-
quency response data as in Section 6.4. One can perform
input–output tests as described in Section 6.4 to get the
magnitude and phase information for the system. One
might use just one long run to get this information, but
some people might make for example 10 make such runs
and average the results to improve the frequency response
information. Then one could design the RC law based on
this improved model. What is suggested here, is that one
should keep all 10 data sets, and design one F(z) that min-
imizes the sum of (or the average of) the costs for all 10
frequency responses.
Some results of numerical experiments in [101]
and [104] illustrate this. Start with the third-order model
in (3.8) and set ω0 = 6(2π) and ζ = 0.1. Then include
471
another second-order factor with ω1 = 18(2π ), ζ = 0.1.
Then input 5000 time steps of known rich inputs picked
as white noise samples, record the response, and com-
pute the frequency response using the method as before
from [134]. Note that this method already splits up the
5000 steps of data and does some averaging. We design
a 20 gain controller (6.2). Consider the case when there
is no noise included in the model, and one still gets the
behavior similar to that in Fig. 27. So, even with perfect
measurements one cannot get perfect frequency response
information.
The left side of Fig. 30 gives the magnitude frequency
response of |1 − GF| when F(z) was designed using the
average of the 10 frequency response tests as a model,
and G(z) is the true system (the plot shows the influ-
ence of several nonzero choices for the penalty function
coefficient VC which slows down learning at higher fre-
quencies). The plot goes above unity at about 35 Hz
indicating that one would have to cut off the learning
process for this and higher frequencies in order to be
stable. Now consider what happens when we pick F(z)
to minimize the sum of 10 cost functions, one cost for
the frequency response functions from each data set. The
results are on the right side of Fig. 30 and it is seen that
the design is stable, and there is no need for a cutoff of
the learning process above some frequency. The same
conclusions apply when one introduces measurement
noise.
Reference [112] goes one step beyond the cost aver-
aging to obtain robustness. The cost averaging is seen to
emphasize adjusting the phase as a function of frequency
in order to get as many of the uncertain models as possi-
ble into the stable region for that frequency. One can also
adjust the learning rate as a function of frequency, with a
lower learning speed producing improved robustness up
to a limit. The algorithm in [112] does both averaging and
adjusting the learning rate to be as fast as is consistent with
the uncertainty at each frequency.
472
Fig. 31. Frequency spectrum of belt velocity errors with feedback control only (left), and after applying RC designed not to fix a peak at 240 Hz.
9. Zero-Phase Low-Pass Filter Design:
Robustification to High Frequency
Model Error
There are various reasons to want to apply a frequency
cutoff of the learning process:
(1) One reason was mentioned in the previous section,
to obtain stability in the presence of unmodeled high
frequency dynamics. Usually, there are extra poles in
a system at high frequency which are very likely not
present in one’s model. These are sometimes called
parasitic poles, or residual modes. In most control
systems this is not a serious problem. As discussed
in Section 5.3, in RC one needs a model G(z) that
is good to better than ±90◦ all the way to Nyquist
if one wants to make |1 − GF| less than unity for all
frequencies. In continuous time one extra pole at high
enough frequency subtracts 90◦ , and in discrete time
it is likely to subtract 180◦ at Nyquist since the phase
there must be a multiple of 180◦ . Hence, we should
expect to see slow instability in RC if we do not use
a cutoff filter. We cannot design a cutoff for this pur-
pose analytically or numerically. We have to observe
the way the learning law behaves applied to the real
world, perhaps monitor the discrete Fourier transform
of the error as time progresses to determine what fre-
quencies are growing. And then tune the filter cutoff
accordingly.
(2) Perhaps one needs to cut off the learning process above
some limit in order to be kind to the hardware. Exper-
iments were run to obtain constant velocity of a belt
in a copy machine, in spite of periodic speed fluctu-
ations related to once around of each gear and each
belt in the timing belt drive. We were able to elimi-
nate all peaks, but the machine was making so much
noise we expected we would be wearing it out. Per-
haps the ball bearings were rattling. The conclusion
R.W. Longman
was that one should not try to fix the 240 Hz peak,
which corresponded to the tooth meshing frequency
of the fast timing belt. It was sufficiently far above
the bandwidth of the control system that the correc-
tive action required a command 11 times as large as
the error being corrected. Fig. 31 shows the frequency
spectrum of the velocity error with feedback control
alone, and after applying such an RC law [41].
(3) Similarly, one may reach actuator limitations when
the corrective action is too far above the bandwidth of
the system.
(4) Some simple RC laws do not try to keep the frequency
response of |1 − GF| less than one all the way to
Nyquist, and hence even in the design stage they need
a cutoff filter.
One approach to making the cutoff aims to make a per-
fect zero-phase filter that is one in the passband and zero in
the stopband. This is discussed in detail below. As noted
above, one is likely to pick the cutoff by applying the
learning law to the real world, and finding what frequency
components of the error grow. Because the output at high
frequencies is small, the instability is very often quite slow
to develop, so it can be reasonable to apply an unstable
law in hardware for purposes of tuning. Another option in
producing the zero-phase filter needed for stabilization is
to make a filter that minimally attenuates, just enough to
make the stability condition (4.4) satisfied. It is interest-
ing to note that one can not only observe which frequency
components grow, but also how fast they grow, and this
information tells one the amount of cutoff needed for stabi-
lization at each frequency, as it indicates how far the polar
frequency response plot goes outside the unit circle [113].
Fig. 32 shows the differences between the sensitivity trans-
fer functions for these two approaches applied to a system
having missing high frequency dynamics [113]. The effect
is to attenuate error at some harmonics of the addressed
period just above the cutoff without being able to achieve
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 32. Sensitivity transfer function behavior with a perfect cutoff filter (left) and a filter doing a minimal attenuation as needed to satisfy the stability
condition (right).
zero error, and then this benefit must be paid for by actually
amplifying some higher harmonics of the error. Without
knowing what is wrong with one’s model one is not able to
make an evaluation of which approach gives the best error
levels. Here we simply examine how to design a sharp
cutoff filter.
9.1. FIR Filter Design
References [21, 128] use what is termed a Q filter as
a zero-phase low-pass filter. Perhaps because of real
time computation limits, these filters have been simple
and low order. Here, we consider how we might get
the best possible performance, aiming for as close to
zero error as possible. The material reported here comes
from [98, 8], which consider how to make improved FIR
filters specialized for the RC objective.
One might like to have a perfect zero-phase low-pass
filter H(z), one that is unity up to the cutoff frequency and
then zero above this cutoff. Let us ignore for the moment
the possible need for an interpolator I(z). Then the forcing
function in the difference equation (4.1) is zero below the
cutoff frequency, and is simply Y ∗ (z) − V (z) above the
cutoff where no learning is attempted. The cutoff would
then be chosen so that |H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]| < 1 for all z
on the unit circle. When the compensator designed based
on our model becomes so poor that the term in square
brackets becomes larger than unity in magnitude, then the
H(z) is made zero. Of course we would need to tune this in
hardware, taking advantage of the fact that the instability
in hardware is likely to be slow.
The filter is an FIR filter of the form
n
H(z) = ak z k
k=−n
In order to make a zero-phase filter, this needs an odd
number of gains, with the same number of terms going
473
backward in time as forward in time, and the gain for
any backward in time term must equal the gain for the
corresponding forward in time term. Then the optimiza-
tion criterion is
jp

JH = α [1 − H(eiωj T )][1 − H(eiωj T )]∗
j=0

N−1
+ [H(eiωj T )][H(eiωj T )]∗ (9.2)
j=js
where the first summation is over the passband, and the
second summation is over the stopband. Simply adjusting
the parameter α can significantly influence performance
as shown in Fig. 33. The RC performance in the passband
can only be as good as the filter is at approximating the
desired unity value. Any error leaves a nonzero forcing
function in equation (4.1) producing a nonzero steady-
state particular solution. The right plot still has some
ripple in the passband, and the stopband peaks have
been accentuated by going to the higher α. Minimiza-
tion of (9.2) simply requires the solution of a linear set
of equations, as in the case of the compensator design in
Section 6.2.
We can improve the design by imposing constraints
on the passband that it does not exceed unity, and that
the DC gain is equal to unity, and then we can allow a
transition band between the passband and the stopband.
Fig. 34 shows the results of introducing the equality and
inequality constraints into the problem with α = 1. Keep-
ing the peaks below unity is important in obtaining the
highest possible cutoff in practice. Fig. 35 shows dramatic
(9.1)
improvement in both the stopband and the passband of
Fig. 34 when a transition band of 10% Nyquist is intro-
duced between the top frequency in the first term in (9.2)
and the lowest frequency in the second term.
474 R.W. Longman

Fig. 33. The magnitude frequency response of a zero-phase low-pass filter with a cutoff of 30% Nyquist using 51 gains. The left plot uses α = 1 and
the right uses α = 5000.

To illustrate how the improved filters can benefit

the design, we consider an example of designing the
RC compensator from noisy frequency response data
as in Section 6.4 [97]. Because the frequency response
information is not good at high frequency, it is neces-
sary to cut off below 63 Hz. However, if the filter with
α = 1 from Fig. 33 were used with the cutoff adjusted as
needed, it would have to cut off at 47.5 Hz as shown in
Fig. 36. Changing the cutoff filter to that with α = 5000
produces the results on the right of Fig. 36 that allow a
63 Hz cutoff of the learning process.
The minimization of (9.2) with equality and inequality
constraints on the magnitude of the frequency response is
accomplished using quadratic programming. Such codes
are easy to use and run very quickly for the problems of
designing these low-pass filters.
Fig. 34. The result of imposing a DC gain of unity, and inequality
constraint on passband magnitude, α = 1.
Quadratic Programming Problem: Given the sequence
of numbers e(k) to filter, the filtered values are
given by
f (k) = an e(k − n) + an−1 e(k − n + 1) + · · ·

+ a0 e(k) + a1 e(k + 1) + · · · + an e(k + n)

(9.3)
 T
The unknowns: x = a0 2a1 · · · 2an
 T
Coefficient matrix: bj = 1 cos θj · · · cos nθj
Normalized frequencies: θj = jπ/N; j = 0, 1, 2, . . . , N − 1
Passband frequencies: j = 0, 1, . . . , jp (want filter to be
equal to 1 for these j)
Stopband frequencies: j = js , . . . , N − 1 (js ≥ jp + 1,
want filter to have zero output at these j)
Transition band frequencies: jp + 1 ≤ j ≤ js − 1 (there is
Fig. 35. Introducing a 10% transition band into the design of Fig. 33. no transition band unless js > jp + 1 )
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 475

Fig. 36. Left: Adjusting the cutoff to the highest possible value when there is model error, using a filter with α = 1. Right: Improvement in the cutoff
frequency to 63 Hz obtained by using α = 5000.

Fig. 37. Effective cutoff frequency vs. intended cutoff frequency.

Optimization Criterion: get zero error for all frequency components of the error up
  to this cutoff. A very surprising property of the frequency
  jp

N−1  cutoff is discovered in [74, 51], show that the effective
J = min α [1 − bjT x]2 + [bjT x]2 cutoff of the learning can be much lower than the cutoff
x  
j=0 j=js frequency used in the filter design. Hence, we are forced
  to pick the filter cutoff frequency based on stability con-
1 T
= min x Px + cT x (9.4) siderations, and might feel unhappy that we are unable to
x 2
learn above this cutoff. And then we find that the situation
is worse, we fail to learn above a much lower frequency.
Constraints: The sensitivity transfer function from command or
disturbance to error, from equation (4.1) (not considering
bjT x ≤ 1j = 0, 1, . . . , jc
the interpolator I(z)) is
a0 + 2a1 + · · · + 2an = 1 (9.5) zp − H(z)
S(z) = (9.6)
zp − H(z)[1 − G(z)F(z)]
9.2. The Discrepancy Between Intended Cutoff Note that our aim is to make signals of period p time steps
and Effective Cutoff Frequency have zero error, and for these frequencies zp = 1. This
makes the sensitivity transfer function for RC the same
One picks the cutoff in designing H(z) as needed in order as for iterative learning control, so the ILC results in [74]
to satisfy |H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]| < 1. The intention, and also apply here. Fig. 37 illustrates the phenomenon. For
the expectation is that the resulting RC system will try to simplicity of interpretation, the system transfer function
476 R.W. Longman

G(z) is taken to be the same as a fifth-order Butterworth

filter for 100 Hz sample rate. And the zero-phase low-
pass filter H(z) uses the same Butterworth filter run both
forward and backward. On the left of the figure is the situ-
ation when the product F(z)G(z) remains large until well
above the intended cutoff. And we see that the intended
cutoff, the frequencies when H(z) decays quickly, cor-
respond to the frequency when the sensitivity transfer
function stops giving small error. So the intended cutoff
and the actual cutoff coincide. The right part of the figure
designs a cutoff for a high frequency in H(z) which is well
above the frequency when F(z)G(z) has started to decay.
Note that we are using a linear magnitude scale, but if we
were using the usual dB scale we would be able to observe Fig. 38. Sensitivity transfer function amplitude at cutoff frequency as a
that the magnitude of F(z)G(z) is not zero, just small. RC function of the value of G(z)F(z) assuming it is real valued.
design often aims to fix errors above the bandwidth of an
existing feedback control system, the learning might be
aims to keep the G(z)F(z) product close to unity, then the
slow depending on the RC law, but it can nevertheless
sensitivity transfer function will be near 0.5 as desired. If
be beneficial to continue learning even when F(z)G(z)
the product has decayed to 0.1 then the sensitivity transfer
is small. However, the effective frequency cutoff of the
function value is around 0.9 meaning that it has its cutoff
learning is shown by the sensitivity transfer function curve
frequency at a far lower frequency.
which cuts off at approximately 24 Hz (50% cutoff value)
Although RC design by (6.3) does not have G(z)F(z)
compared to the intended cutoff at 40 Hz. This, such a
decay at high frequencies, perhaps most designs do decay,
design is sacrificing learning to eliminate errors between
and if the decay is large enough one should expect to see
24 and 40 Hz.
the behavior described here. Note that if one needs to use
One can understand this phenomenon as follows. The
interpolation, the effect can be accentuated as described
H(z) aims to equal 1 below the cutoff and 0 above, but
below.
makes this transition spread over a range of frequencies.
When zp = 1 in (9.6), it can be written as 1−H divided by
1−H[1−GF]. Looking only at the numerator, one expects 9.3. Batch Zero-Phase Low-Pass Filtering
that it will produce zero below the cutoff as intended,
and go to one above the cutoff. But the denominator can In iterative learning control one can use zero phase IIR
change this. When GF gets small, the numerator and the filtering as one can do computations between runs, or one
denominator can look like a number divided by itself, can compute during runs and apply when ready to the
giving about unity as an answer, in spite the fact that 1−H next run [33, 32, 79]. This allows one to use very effective
is still trying to be zero. Hence, one can get the sensitiv- high order Butterworth filters. One filters the data set for-
ity transfer function to look like one, meaning it does not ward in time using such a filter, which puts in phase lag.
attenuate error, even though the numerator is trying to be Then one reverses the time history of the resulting out-
zero. put, runs that through the filter again, canceling the phase
Fig. 38 from [51] evaluates this effect assuming that lag and doubling the attenuation, and finally reverses the
G(z)F(z) is real. Note that the frequency domain-based time sequence of the result. The Butterworth filter does not
optimization (6.3) can make this product very close to real, suffer from the ripple going above unity gain, which was
depending on the number of gains. And many other design fixed for the FIR design by use of quadratic programming
approaches simply aim to make this real, as this guarantees above.
stability provided one does not use some very large gain. There are situations in RC where, due to real time
Because we are using zero-phase filters for the cutoff, we computation limitations, one wants to apply zero-phase
choose the frequency when H = 0.5 as the intended cutoff low-pass filtering in a batch mode. This can be done as sug-
frequency (this is the square of the bandwidth definition gested in [42, 43] with some discussion given in [70, 80].
that results if one applies a causal filter forward and then One could use the following approach, for example. Con-
backward in time to get zero phase). Then if the sensitivity tinue to use the same input signal until a new batch update
transfer function is also at 0.5 we would say the effective arrives. After it arrives, we start applying it to the sys-
cutoff is equal to the intended cutoff. If it is close to one, tem. Each step of the first period is using a new input
then the sensitivity transfer function cuts off at some lower signal, so we might allow two periods to reach steady-
frequency. In Fig. 38, if one uses the design of (6.3) that state response to this signal. Then we start the forward
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Butterworth filtering at the start of the third period, and
continue for three periods. The first of these has some
Butterworth filter transients related to the filter initial con-
ditions, so we ignore the filter output for this period. When
the filtering reaches the end of the third period, it starts fil-
tering backward on stored data and continues backward
for two periods. The first of these contains transients of
the backward filter related to its initial conditions, so that
period filter results are ignored. One records the result
for the second period going backward in time, and uses
it for the update of the RC action, starting at the next
period after the results are available. Of course, depend-
ing on the period of interest and the settling times of the
system and of the filter, one might speed up the pro-
cess above using fewer time steps for decay to steady
state.
Perhaps this is easiest implemented with a separate com-
puter running in parallel. And then an apply when ready
approach can also allow one to perform additional moni-
toring tasks, such as checking for possible growth of error
at some frequency, and adjusting the cutoff. But one can
also interweave the computation for each step of the fil-
ter updates with the real time control computer, so it only
requires a real time computation level capable of doing
a Butterworth filter update each time step. Note also that
the initial condition for the Butterworth filter can be a
problem in ILC, where there is no data to use before the
start time and typical zero-phase filter code makes some
choice of how to reflect initial time steps of input to get
initial conditions to start the filter. It is shown in [79] that
this process can in fact produce instability in the ILC
updates. For the RC application here, we have all the
data we need for initial conditions, so this issue does not
arise.
The conditions for convergence of a batch update RC are
somewhat different than for real time RC, and are studied
in [42].
10. Design for Non-Integer Periods:
Interpolator Design or Low-Pass
Filter Modification
10.1. Interpolation
When the period of interest is not an integer number of
time steps, one might decide to simply use the nearest
integer value for p. For low frequencies this may not
cause much difficulty, but at Nyquist frequency being
off by half a time step is equivalent to being off by 90◦
since there are only two samples per period. If one is
using a learning cutoff that is low enough, then the nearest
integer may be satisfactory. Otherwise, one can use inter-
polation to approximate unmeasured values one period
477
back. Reference [75] shows how doing this over a num-
ber of periods spreads the dependence over more and
more data points. This section presents material related to
references [56, 9, 136]. For simplicity, consider the sim-
plest form of RC with a simple gain φ. When the period
pT does not correspond to an integer value for p, one can
use interpolation to approximate the unknown e(k −p+1)
in terms of the known errors e(k−p− +1) and e(k−p+ +1)
and use
u(k) = a1 [u(k − p− ) + φe(k − p− + 1)]
+ a2 [u(k − p+ ) + φe(k − p+ + 1)] (10.1)
where p+ is the nearest integer of the period p (in time
steps) on the positive side, and p− is the nearest integer on
the negative side, and a1 = p+ − p and a1 + a2 = 1. More
generally, we can write the RC law in transform space with
no cutoff filter as
+
zp U(z) = I2 (z)[U(z) + F(z)E(z)] (10.2)
I2 (z) = a1 z + a2
To improve on linear interpolation, one can consider cubic
interpolation that interpolates using two past points and
two future points. The I2 (z) above is replaced by
I4 (z) = a1 z−1 + a2 + a3 z + a4 z2 (10.3)
α = p+ − p, β = 1 − α
a1 = −(1/6)αβ(1 + β); a2 = (1/2)(1 + α)β(1 + β)
a3 = (1/2)(1 + α)α(1 + β); a4 = −(1/6)(1 + α)αβ
When the RC law is used to compute the difference
equation for the error as in (4.1), the value of p in that
equation becomes the integer p+ used in (10.2). Of course,
one can reformulate to use p− instead, if that is closer to
the true period. Fig. 39 plots the frequency response of the
linear interpolator in (10.2) and of a 12 gain interpolator
for different values of the fractional part of the period, d,
in period p, ranging from zero when no interpolator is
needed to d = 0.5 when the interpolation point is half
way between the recorded time steps. Note that when d is
zero the interpolator has amplitude one at all frequencies.
When d is not equal to zero, the interpolation acts as a
low-pass filter, so the output of the interpolation is always
magnitude one or less. And when d reaches 0.5, the output
of the filter goes to zero at Nyquist frequency.
Observation: Any RC law that has been designed to
satisfy the stability condition
|H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]| < 1∀ z = eiωT (10.4)
478
Fig. 39. The magnitude frequency response for linear interpolation (left) and for 12 gain interpolation (right) for different values of the fractional time
step d.
Fig. 40. Steady-state error due to interpolation vs. addressed frequency. Left: linear interpolation. Right: cubic interpolation.
cannot be destabilized by introducing an interpolation fil-
ter with the property that its magnitude frequency response
is less than or equal to unity at all frequencies.
To see more clearly the effects of interpolation, let us
examine the steady-state error as a function of addressed
frequency. With H(z) set to one in (4.1), the coefficient
zp − I(z) on the right of the equation is trying to make the
forcing function zero at the addressed frequencies. Any
error in doing so means there is a nonzero forcing function,
and a nonzero steady-state error. We can plot this error as a
function of the chosen addressed frequency by substituting
it into the sensitivity transfer function (9.6), and replac-
ing p by p+ , and H(z) by the chosen I(z). The magnitude
response is given in Fig. 40, for the case of designing an
eight coefficient compensator (6.2) that minimizes (6.3)
for one zero on the negative real axis at the asymptotic
location for a third-order pole excess (−3.732). This cor-
responds to considering a third-order system such as (3.8)
and using the method of (6.6) to cancel everything inside
the unit circle. Of course this design aims to cancel the
steady-state frequency response of the system. Not all RC
R.W. Longman
laws do so. Consider using the simplest form of RC, with
F(z) = φz and φ = 1, on a first-order system given by the
first-order factor on the right of (3.8). The corresponding
result is given in Fig. 41. The RC with interpolation fails
to significantly attenuate the error at many frequencies.
The conclusion is that if one has to use interpolation, one
will get much better performance if one uses an RC law
that aims to cancel the system dynamics in the frequency
domain.
In Section 9.2 the discrepancy between the design cut-
off frequency perhaps dictated by stability considerations,
and the effective cutoff in the sensitivity transfer function
was discussed. From [51], to understand the influence of
introducing the interpolation, note that one replaces H
by HI in the sensitivity transfer function S = [1 − HI]/
[1−HI(1−GF)]. To illustrate the effect, suppose that H is
0.5 and that the interpolation makes HI equal 0.25. When
GF is one, then S is 0.75 so that the cutoff has appeared
earlier. And when GF is 0.1, then S is 0.97 (compared to
0.91 without I) and the sensitivity transfer function has cut
off the learning at a much lower frequency.
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems 479

Fig. 41. Steady-state error due to interpolation for first-order system using the simplest RC law. Linear interpolation left, cubic right.

10.2. Modification of Zero-Phase Low-Pass Filter
References [131, 144] propose to produce an FIR filter to
mimic the frequency response properties of a fraction of a
time step error in the period, and this filter can simultane-
ously act as a low-pass filter as well. Reference [9] uses
this idea together with the improved low-pass filter design
methods of Section 9.1. One uses an FIR filter as in (6.2)
and picks the coefficients to minimize
jL
JH = α[(eiωj T )d − Hd (eiωj T )][(eiωj T )d − Hd (eiωj T )]∗
j=0
This is no longer a standard quadratic programming prob-
lem. General purpose minimization routines can give
answers but can also give one trouble in converging to
an answer. Quadratic minimizations subject to such a spe-
cial form of quadratic constraint offers the opportunity to
create specialized software for the purpose. One approach
is presented in [9].
Fig. 42 presents example filter behavior when the filter
is designed purely to produce the phase of a partial time
step lead of 0.25T . The value of n is 52, and the values
of m are given in the figure, where these numbers are
as in (6.2).


N−1
10.3. Other Options
+ [Hd (eiωj T )][Hd (eiωj T )]∗ (10.5)
j=jR The approach to RC so far is based on looking back one
period, in the control law. This initially aims to eliminate
aiming to match the linear phase and unit magnitude of a
all error having that period, i.e. all error of the fundamental
partial time step delay, and also to have the frequency cut-
frequency with that period, and all harmonics. Introducing
off. The constraint we wish to impose, that the magnitude
a cutoff filter stops this above some frequency. Another
response of the filter should not exceed unity, becomes
possibility is to aim at specific frequencies alone, instead
[Hd (eiωj T )][Hd (eiωj T )]∗ ≤ 1 which is now a quadratic
of aiming for all frequencies of a specific period. Such an
constraint on a quadratic minimization:
approach is mentioned here because it has the property that

jL 
N−1 there is no need for interpolation. To do this, one needs
JH = α (1 − bjT x)(1 − bjT x)∗ + (bjT x)(bjT x)∗ to find the error components on the sine and cosine of the
j=0 j=jR chosen frequencies. These functions tell you how to do
(10.6) any “interpolation” needed, i.e. if you know the function,
you can evaluate it at any time you want.
 T
x = x0 x1 · · · xn (real) Early experiments doing this are reported in [81].
References [88, 89, 16, 135, 67] develop what is termed
 T
bj = eiθj (d−m) eiθj (d−m+1) · · · eiθj (d−m+n) matched basis function RC. The projection algorithm from
adaptive control theory is used to find components of the
θj = (π/N)j; 0 < d < 1; jR ≥ jL + 1 input and components of the output on chosen basis func-
tions. These functions are sines and cosines of the chosen
(bjT x)(bjT x)∗ ≤ 1 for j = 0, 1, . . . , jL frequencies, but those used in the input and those used
in the output are related by the amplitude change and the
x0 + x 1 + · · · + x n = 1 phase change produced by the system transfer function,
480
Fig. 42. Magnitude and phase plots for several choices of FIR filter H(z) designed to mimic the phase response of a partial time step delay.
i.e. they are matched input–output pairs. RC uses the dis-
crete equivalent of an integral for every signal of the given
period in order to converge to zero error when there is
some model error, and similarly there is a discrete version
of integration for each basis function component. After
finding the frequency components of the error, one applies
the needed matched input frequency components to can-
cel the error. Note that this produces linear equations with
periodic coefficients.
Reference [67, 135] use Floquet theory to evaluate
performance of such a design, and this is sometimes
referred to as time raising. References [88, 89] do fre-
quency domain raising to handle the periodic coefficients.
An interesting property is that after considerable mathe-
matics, there is a time invariant z-transfer function form
of the matched basis function RC law that originally has
periodic coefficients. Some experimental results and some
experience in the need to adjust gains for different fre-
quencies can be found in [16]. One of the motivations for
these publications is to be able to handle multiple unre-
lated frequencies in the disturbance. A method of doing
this starting from the basic formulations of this article is
presented in Section 15.
11. RC Compensator Design:
Alternative Approaches
There have been many RC laws generated over the last
decades. We discuss only a few of them here.
11.1. Tomizuka Phase Cancellation Design
An alternative design method to that suggested above
using (6.3) is given in [120, 35, 55]. Instead of canceling
everything inside the unit circle and designing F2 (z) as
in (6.6) by minimizing (6.3), these references introduce a
new zero at the reciprocal location, and a pole at the origin,
R.W. Longman
and then adjust the DC gain to unity. This has the effect of
canceling the phase of the system. No attempt is made to
adjust the magnitude, as is done by (6.3). To understand
how the approach works, consider that everything inside
the unit circle has been canceled by F1 (z) leaving just the
factor (z + zO ) with a zero at −zO (for example, at the
asymptotic location −3.73). For improved ease of under-
standing in this development, we have changed the sign
in the definition of zO . Then the product of this remaining
term and the compensator design, before normalizing, is
(z + zO )(z + 1/zO )/z = (z + zO )(z−1 + zO )/zO (11.1)
For z on the unit circle to evaluate frequency response, this
is equal to
[1 + (eiωT + e−iωT )zO + zO
2
]/zO
= [1 + 2 cos(ωT )zO + zO
2
]/zO (11.2)
The angle ωT goes from zero to 180◦ at Nyquist. At
zero the numerator is equal to (1 + zO )2 and at 180◦ it
is equal to (1 − zO )2 , both numbers being positive. Note
that the derivative of the numerator with respect to ωT is
−2 sin(ωT )zO which is zero at zero frequency, goes pos-
itive (for negative zO ) for all frequencies up to Nyquist
when again it reaches zero derivative. Hence, the value
of the numerator monotonically increases from the pos-
itive value (1 + zO )2 to the positive value (1 − zO )2 as
the frequency goes from zero to Nyquist. Now introduce
the normalization that makes the complete term equal to
+1 when z = +1 for zero frequency, and we observe that
the product of this zero term and the compensator is real
and positive for all frequencies, and that its magnitude is 1
at zero frequency and decays as the frequency goes up.
The normalized value when reaching Nyquist frequency
is then given by
(1 − zO )2 /(1 + zO )2 (11.3)
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 43. Magnitude frequency response of 1 − F(z)G(z).
Fig. 44. Magnitude plot of G(z)F(z) canceling poles and zeros
inside unit circle, and using Tomizuka compensator for the asymptotic
locations of zeros outside. Pole excesses 3, 5, 7, and 9, top to bottom.
Fig. 43 plots the magnitude frequency response of
|1 − G(z)F(z)| for the system G(z) = (z + zO ) and com-
pensator F(z) just designed, for the case of zO = −2.
And the plot starts at zero and increases monotonically
to 8/9 at Nyquist frequency. The design makes a low-
pass filter. The plot also shows the corresponding plots
for the design using (6.3) (with VC set to zero), and the
plot obtained using the design based on Taylor expansions.
Fig. 44 shows the design method applied to the asymptotic
locations (as T tends to zero) of the zeros outside the unit
circle in discrete time, for pole excesses of the continuous
time feedback control system of 3, 5, 7, and 9, show-
ing the attenuation produced at high frequency. Because
this design cancels phase, G(z)F(z) is real, and one can
directly apply Fig. 38 to get an indication of the discrep-
ancy between low-pass filter cutoff and the effective cutoff
in the sensitivity transfer function. This discrepancy is not
particularly serious for this design approach, unless one
wants to cut off at a high percent of Nyquist frequency. But
remember that interpolation accentuates this discrepancy.
The advantages and disadvantages of the design approach
in this section include, (1) the approach is rather simple,
(2) but it is not amenable to design directly from frequency
response data so one must develop a transfer function
model, (3) and it produces a decay of the learning rate
with frequency that might not be desired.
481
11.2. Some Other FIR Phase Cancellation Designs
Various iterative learning control laws have as their main
aim to cancel the phase. And there are ways to make use
of these ILC laws for RC, as demonstrated in experiments
on a constant velocity timing belt drive system [41, 42]
(see also [80, 70]). One design, termed a (Euclidean norm)
contraction mapping law [52, 53], can be viewed as imple-
= φG(z−1 ), in which
menting F(z)
  case |1 − GF| < 1
becomes 1 − φG(eiωT )G(e−iωT ) < 1. The two Gs rep-
resent a complex number times its complex conjugate and
are hence positive. And for φ small enough, this is auto-
matically stable. There are various ways to use this law.
The difference equation represented by G(z−1 ) can be run
backward in time on error data from the previous period
that is future to the time step one period back. To avoid
needing correct initial conditions running this equation
backward, one needs to start sufficiently ahead to have the
transients settled once the time step where the result is
needed is reached. An alternative is to apply the convolu-
tions sum solution to the future error values which is done
in [41, 42]. The computation time may limit the number of
Markov parameters one can use to make this computation.
If so, one can apply a window to the process, as demon-
strated in [18]. Basically, the window needs to eliminate
any cliff left at the point where the Markov parameters are
truncated.
A disadvantage of this law is that the learning rate is
related to the square
 of the
 magnitude frequency response
of the system G(eiωT ), making the learning very slow
at high frequencies. One can modify the law to take out
the magnitude part of the update, aiming to make F(z)
match G(e−iωT ) divided by this magnitude. In the finite
time ILC problems this law is termed a partial isometry
law [54, 80, 70]. The law is implemented in ILC by taking
the singular valued decomposition of the Toeplitz matrix
of Markov parameters, setting all singular values to unity,
taking the transpose of the matrix and applying it to the
future data. Note that these singular values are asymptot-
ically related to the magnitude frequency response of the
system, and this relationship is studied in detail in [17].
Again, one can make these computations to determine the
gains needed for the implementation to RC, computing the
ILC law and picking the gains from the center of the matrix
of gains, to avoid end effects. Reference [31] develops
this phase cancellation design for ILC, but does so purely
from frequency response, so the results apply directly to
RC, and the approach is done for MIMO. RC experiments
using this law are also presented in [41]. Note that Fig. 17
is the experimental polar frequency plot of G(z)F(z) for
a phase cancellation design developed by this approach.
The design is made from frequency response tests con-
verted to pulse response histories using ratios of output to
input discrete Fourier transforms. Perhaps a better method
482
of designing the FIR filter is to simply reformulate (6.3)
to fit (6.2) to the phase cancellation task, and this too can
be done using frequency response data without any need
to make a transfer function model.
11.3. Linear Phase Lead RC
We include one more RC design method, which has the
advantage of being very simple, and does not necessar-
ily require a mathematical model or frequency response
information. Instead it can just be tuned in the hardware.
In [80, 70] it was presented as an ILC or RC method some-
what analogous to using a PD, PI, or PID controller in
classical control, as it only involves tuning a couple param-
eters. The compensator is chosen as F(z) = φzγ where φ
is the usual RC gain, and γ is an integer. In the simplest
form of RC, γ was picked as one, or more precisely as the
time step delay through the system. Here, we artificially
increase this number, producing a compensator that is just
a linear phase lead, zγ = (eiωT )γ produces a phase lead
of (γ − 1)ωT beyond the one step needed for the delay
through the system. This approach was presented in [132],
and various properties were investigated, including auto-
mated tuning of the parameters, in [78, 137]. Again, [41]
presents the results of some experiments on the timing belt
drive using linear phase lead RC. Danwei Wang has also
published several works on this topic, e.g. [130], and calls
the approach anticipatory ILC.
This linear phase lead is a very simple compensator, and
one does not need to work hard designing this compen-
sator for the system. One can use experimental frequency
response data, or a model, and apply the linear phase
lead for a range of integer leads γ , and observe which
value keeps the product G(z)F(z) inside the unit circle to
the highest possible frequency. Or equivalently, plot the
magnitude |1 − G(z)F(z)| for z = exp(iωT ) for a range
of choices of γ , and pick that value for which the plot
goes above unity at the highest frequency, see for example
Fig. 45 from [137] where m corresponds to γ . Pick this
value and then design the cutoff filter to cut off the RC pro-
cess a small but safe distance below this frequency. Note
that [137] studied an automated on-line tuning process for
this RC design, and discovered that one can have a higher
cutoff if one uses a limit cycle, picking different phase
leads each run in a periodic manner.
In the previous methods the cutoff filter was needed to
produce robustness to high-frequency model errors. This
time the cutoff is most likely needed because even with our
model we know that the plot will go outside the unit circle.
And based on the model, a plot like Fig. 45 says where the
cutoff is needed. Clearly, this approach puts emphasis on
simplicity of the design process, and the implementation
(it only needs one error measurement to compute the con-
trol action each time step), at the expense of not aiming for
R.W. Longman
Fig. 45. Tuning the cutoff when using linear phase lead RC.
maximum accuracy based on having the highest possible
cutoff of the learning process.
12. Startup of an RC System
In iterative learning control each iteration is supposed to
start from the same initial condition, and that initial con-
dition is on the desired trajectory. RC is different. There
is only one startup, and this cannot happen when the feed-
back control system is turned on, it must wait to start until
it has data from the error for a complete period to use in the
RC law. In addition, often the purpose of the RC system is
to cancel a periodic disturbance external to the system, and
this external disturbance might be in any phase of its period
at the time the RC is started. And this means that at the
time of start up, one should expect a step discontinuity in
the RC input to the feedback control system. And [15, 71]
show that there will be images of this startup disconti-
nuity that can take a long time to disappear. Figs. 46–48
come from [71] and illustrate the phenomenon. Consider a
G(s) = 8.8/(s + 8.8) that is fed by a zero-order hold sam-
pling at 200 Hz sample rate. Let the command be zero,
and the objective of the control system is to cancel the
influence of an output disturbance that is a cosine at 1 Hz
frequency. And use the simplest form of RC that uses a
simple gain φ = 1 times the error e(k − p + 1). Turning on
the RC when the time step corresponds to the output dis-
turbance at its maximum value, produces the command
history u(k) in Fig. 46, with a discontinuity of the size
of the disturbance at the turn on time. This introduces
high frequency components into the control action, and
for some RC laws high frequencies will take a long time
to learn. Figs. 47 and 48 show the influence of the startup
discontinuity just after turning the system on, and after
34 and 35 periods, and periods 64 and 65. The amplitude
is decaying, the frequency of the error is moving upward
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
and the error is spreading with repetitions as it decreases in
magnitude.
There are various methods of trying to decrease this phe-
nomenon. First, note that when one uses the recommended
design approach here from optimization of (6.3), there are
Fig. 46. Command history showing initial jump when RC is turned on,
and showing images of this jump in early periods.
Fig. 47. The resulting early error history showing the effects of images
of startup.
Fig. 48. Later error associated with images of startup: periods 34 and 35 (left), and periods 64 and 65 (right).
483
no images of startup, the method eliminates the difficulty
automatically. However, if one chooses to put a gain in
front of the resulting design that is less than unity, then
the images of startup will reappear. This is also true if one
uses a VC  = 0. Also, if one is using a zero-phase low-pass
filter as in Section 9, then the images of startup will be
smaller, and the lower the cutoff frequency, the smaller
the images. But it can still be helpful to use other methods
to attenuate the images as well. One approach is to mon-
itor the control action that the RC law would choose to
use as a function of time step. Before turning the RC on,
this will be a periodic function. Then pick that time step
in the period when the RC comes closest to making no
change in the command signal. The discontinuity at start
up is minimized, and hence the images of startup are also
minimized. This is not always possible. Perhaps gravity
force makes the errors to be corrected always have the
same sign and never go through zero. One can deal with
both situations by turning on the RC slowly, i.e. change
the gain φ from zero to the desired value linearly with time
over one period or less.
13. RC Compensator Design: Period
Unknown, or Higher Order RC for
Insensitivity to Period Fluctuations
Throughout this article we have assumed that we know the
period of interest. If the purpose of the RC system is to
follow a desired periodic command, then we should know
the period. But if the purpose is to eliminate the influence
of an external periodic disturbance, then we need a way to
stay synchronized with the disturbance. Note from Figs. 5
and 6 that the notches in the sensitivity transfer function
frequency response plots can be quite narrow. And if one
turns down the gain, they become even narrower. Hence,
any adaptive scheme coupled with the methods described
in this article must be able to adapt very accurately to the
true period if one is to get good performance. Relatively
484
small errors move a long way up the sides of the notches,
and can make the RC process not very effective. There are
various situations in which one has the ability to measure
the period. In the case of RC tests for the Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility discussed above, the distur-
bance is from imperfect rectification of AC to DC voltage,
and one can easily get a trigger signal on the AC supply
voltage that will keep the RC action synchronized. Simi-
larly, when the disturbance is from a slight imbalance in a
rotating wheel causing unwanted vibrations, one may be
able to get a trigger signal on that wheel shaft. We con-
sider that one should have such a sensor available to get
superior performance with the class of RC laws discussed
here.
13.1. Some Alternative Approaches
Various approaches to uncertain periods are treated in
the literature [126, 47, 124, 125]. Methods investigated by
the author and co-workers are reported in [14, 30, 86, 87]
where the emphasis is on situations where one does not
have some signal like the trigger signal above, the period
can change with time, and one wants to identify the period
in real time while canceling the disturbance effect, and one
may also have more than one disturbance period as dis-
cussed in Section 15. The methods do not necessarily build
on the RC structure presented here, and can involve real
time disturbance identification as in [14, 30] or use of a
phase lock loop as in [86]. Also, methods are developed
that make use of the matched basis function RC concepts
from [67, 16, 88, 89].
13.2. Theory of Higher Order RC
Higher order RC refers to RC laws that make use of
error information from not just the previous period, but
additional previous periods as well [117, 118, 63, 64, 92].
Generally, it has been difficult to determine any clear ben-
efits for higher order RC. But [117, 118] suggest using
higher order RC with negative coefficients on the measure-
ments for some previous period errors, in order to make
RC less sensitive to period error or period fluctuations.
References [63, 64] study this possibility in detail along
with higher order RC in general, examining the problem
from the point of view of frequency response, and from the
point of view of root locus. The following mathematical
background comes from [64].
The Nth order RC using the simplest form of RC takes
the form
N order RC, and it can be much more difficult to establish
u(k) = αj [u(k − jp) + φe(k − jp + 1)] (13.1)
j=1
R.W. Longman
where the weights αj are chosen by the designer. If one
wants to think of this as creating a weighted average, then
one must pick all positive weights, but this is not necessary.
Generalizing to an RC analogous to (3.3) produces
H(z)F(z)[α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ]
RN (z) =
zNp − H(z)[α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ]
(13.2)
which produces the difference equation analogous to (4.1)
{zNp − H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]
× [α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ]}E(z)
= {zNp − H(z)[α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ]}
× [Y ∗ (z) − V (z)] (13.3)
If one wants to converge to zero error, set H to unity,
and then to obtain zero forcing function in this difference
equation requires that
α1 + α2 + · · · + αN = 1 (13.4)
Of course, if there is a cutoff filter, then to get zero error
below the cutoff also requires this relation to hold among
the weights (and H must be unity there).
If one considers the case when no cutoff filter is used,
then (13.4) allows one to factor the denominator of the RC
transfer function as in the second- and third-order laws
F(z)(α1 zp + α2 )
R2 (z) =
(zp − 1)(zp + α2 )
F(z)(α1 z2p + α2 zp + α3 )
R3 (z) = (13.5)
(zp − 1)[z2p + (1 − α1 )zp + α3 ]
This allows an important interpretation. One could com-
bine the extra terms into the definition of F(z), making a
new compensator with a different symbol, and then one
can consider that higher order RC can be viewed as first-
order RC with a high order compensator, provided H is
set to unity. In the second-order case, it is clear that by
going to second order, one has introduced p additional
poles around a circle, satisfying zp = −α2 , and p addi-
tional zeros satisfying zp = −α2 /α1 . The third-order RC
is less obvious, but it supplies 2p extra poles and 2p extra
zeros, again around circles. Reference [63] classifies the
set of possible configurations of these circles and the root
distribution on these circles into six classes as a function
of the relative values of the weights αj .
The stability theory can be more complicated for higher
whether a system is stable. Note that the heuristic argu-
ment for the monotonic decay condition of equation (4.3)
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
does not make sense for higher order RC. The development
of a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic sta-
bility can parallel the development leading to Theorem 1
of Section 4. The function corresponding to equation (4.6)
for testing stability is
Pc (z) = z−Np H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]
× [α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ] (13.6)
Theorem 2 is generalized to higher order RC by replacing
equation (4.4) by
|H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]
 mance at unaddressed frequencies. Before introducing the

× [α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN ] < 1 (13.7)
giving a condition that is both necessary and sufficient for
asymptotic stability for all possible periods p.
A simpler sufficient condition for stability is
|H(z)[1 − F(z)G(z)]|
 
 
< 1/ max α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN 
|z|=1
(13.8)
These conditions must hold for all z around the unit circle.
Suppose that all αj are positive. Then constraint (13.4)
indicates that the right hand side of (13.8) will be unity. The
conclusion is that the sufficient condition for stability of
first-order RC given by (4.4) is also a sufficient condition
for stability of higher order RC under these conditions.
If we need to establish stability for higher order RC
when one or more αj is negative, then one must use the
Theorem 1 or Theorem 2 results above. Of course (13.8)
can be used, but it is very restrictive for such systems.
The high power of z means that one must be very careful
with the numerical computations for Theorem 1 or 2. For
the special case when H is unity, we can consider that the
higher order RC is a first-order RC with a high order com-
pensator F(z)
N (z), and then another sufficient condition transfer function, not just the frequency response). This
can be written from (4.4) as
|1 − F(z)
N (z)G(z)| < 1 (13.9)
α1 z(N−1)p + α2 z(N−2)p + · · · + αN
N (z) =
z(N−1)p + (1 − α1 )z(N−2)p + · · · + (1 − α1 − · · · − αN−1 )
All of the above development ignored the possible need
for interpolation. One expects that going to higher order
would normally make it more important that one make use
of interpolation. Several comparisons of the performance
of higher order RC vs. first-order RC were made. One of
the anticipated advantages of higher order RC was a lower
final error level in the presence of noise. Because the RC
485
law is using more measurements, one might expect that the
noise in measurements might average out somewhat, giv-
ing better error levels. The simulation studies made before
normalization seemed to support this conjecture [92].
But [64] decided to normalize each higher order RC so that
the DC gain was identical. When this was done, numerical
comparisons seemed to indicate that higher order RC nor-
mally made the final error level worse. The waterbed effect
requires that if there are frequencies for which errors are
attenuated, then there must be other frequencies for which
the errors from disturbances are amplified by the RC con-
trol [115, 116]. Reference [117] suggests that weights that
decay going back in repetitions should improve the perfor-
normalization, such an improvement seemed quite clear,
with the amplification of unaddressed frequencies being
more uniform and smaller in general. However, when the
RC designs being compared were normalized for the same
learning rate at DC, most of the benefit disappeared. The
numerical experience suggests that there is some benefit
of higher order RC in this regard, but the benefit is rather
small. However, as discussed below, by using negative
weights it is possible to make the notches at the addressed
frequencies much wider [117].
13.3. Higher Order RC Used to Widen Notches
Widening the notches has benefit in applications where the
period is subject to some random fluctuations. It could also
be useful when one wants to make an adaptive algorithm
that identifies the period in real time, so that the accuracy
of the identification is not so critical. Of course, you will
have to pay for this benefit in performance by accepting
increased amplification of errors at other frequencies.
Reference [117] suggests using weights for second-
order RC given by α1 = 1.85, α2 = −0.85, and for
third-order RC α1 = 2.93, α2 = −2.93, α3 = 1, in
order to widen the notches. Consider the very simple case
of a transfer function G(z)F(z) = 1 (this applies to the
situation could only apply in the real world in special cases
when all system poles and zeros are inside the unit circle
so that one can make a stable compensator that cancels
them. But it helps develop understanding. Now modify
the compensator to include a new overall gain φ, so that
when it is zero, the roots are at the poles of the open loop
486
Fig. 49. Root locus plots for second-order (left) and third-order (right) RC using negative weights to widen notches, applied to system transfer
function G(z)F(z) = 1.
transfer function, and we can investigate how the roots
move as this gain is increased, turning on the RC. The left
of Fig. 49 presents the root locus for the second-order case.
The extra p poles and extra p zeros introduced by going
to second order are inside the unit circle with the zeros
further inside the unit circle than the poles, and both are
on the radial lines from the origin to the original p poles
on the unit circle. To understand what is happening, it is
easier to slightly modify the gains to α1 = 2, α2 = −1.
Then the characteristic polynomial when the gain is zero
becomes z2p −2zp +1 = (zp −1)2 indicating that the design
makes each of the poles on the unit circle into a double
pole. The departure angle in that case will be tangent to
the unit circle, but the presence of a zero radially inside
the unit circle will attract the locus making it move inward
when the gain is raised, becoming stable. For small gains
the learning will be very slow because of this tangential
departure. When the gains are returned to their original
specified value, the new p poles are no longer on top of the
original poles on the unit circle, and have moved inward
slightly. The poles on the unit circle depart radially inward
so there is a short interval of gains where the decay rate
decreases more quickly, while the new poles inside depart
radially outward to meet somewhere between and then
break away at right angles. What happens after that can be
very much influenced by what the actual system is.
The third-order design comes close to aiming to make
the original p poles on the unit circle into triple roots. One
of the third-order RC root locus patters described in [63]
puts the 2p extra poles all on one circle, with one pole a
little behind and the other pole a little ahead of the original
poles on the unit circle. If the new poles were on the unit
circle then the sensitivity transfer function would go to
zero at the frequencies for the original poles and also go to
zero at some frequency just below and at some frequency
just above the original addressed frequencies. If the poles
are moved slightly in, they will make a minimum, but not
go all the way to zero. Note, however, that the departure
R.W. Longman
angles this time, instead of being tangential to the unit
circle, will depart radially inward, and outward with an
angle of +60◦ and −60◦ from radially outward. Therefore,
this design immediately goes unstable when the gain is
raised from zero. The right hand plot of Fig. 49 shows a
close up view of the root behavior as the gain is increased.
It uses slightly modified gains for computational reasons.
The design is unstable until φ = 0.486 when the zeros
introduced inside the unit circle are able to attract the locus
inside the unit circle.
The top left of Fig. 50 gives the corresponding mag-
nitude of the sensitivity transfer function for the three
designs, using a unity gain when possible, but for the third-
order RC the gain is indicated. The top right plot is a detail.
For the second-order RC, the right hand side of the dif-
ference equation (13.3) is the numerator of the sensitivity
transfer function, and when we look at the magnitude it
will contain |zp − 1|2 . This will be a quadratic minimum.
The first-order RC will have instead |zp − 1| which has a
cusp as a minimum. This is observed in the top right of the
figure. Also in the top right we see the third-order RC go
to zero at two points close to the addressed frequency, one
below and one above it. Note that one pays dramatically
for the widened notches. The influence of disturbances at
frequencies between the frequencies addressed by the RC,
can be amplified by a factor of almost 8. The bottom left
of Fig. 50 presents results for the case of canceling every-
thing inside the unit circle, and there is one zero outside the
unit circle at the asymptotic location for a third-order pole
excess. It is compensated using the method of Tomizuka.
The bottom right in Fig. 50 uses a design based on (6.3)
picking n and m to allow it to introduce three more zeros
outside approximately on the circle of the original zero
outside, and to introduce four zeros inside (which will be
similar to the reciprocal values). This design is similar to
repeating the Tomizuka patter four times around the cir-
cle, but we comment that this compensator is not as good
as one that places all of the allowed zeros outside the unit
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 50. Sensitivity transfer function magnitude plots for second- and third-order RC used to widen the notches, for several systems.
circle. Note that with this compensator, the results are
essentially identical to those in the top left of the figure.
Hence, the design method of (6.3) improves the ability to
get wide notches.
14. Dealing with Noise
When there is plant and measurement noise in the feed-
back control system, one cannot converge to zero error.
Because the RC uses measured error from the previous
period with the assumption that the same error will appear
again if nothing is changed in the input, the RC law will act
on the nonrepeating part of the signal, amplifying the error
level due to noise. Reference [58] develops the equations
to compute the final error level due to noise. It is some-
what more complicated than in routine feedback control,
because the plant and measurement noise influence the
feedback control system, and they also influence the RC
system.
Of course, as the plant and measurement noise covari-
ances increase, so does the covariance of the final error
level due to noise. Also, the gain of the RC law directly
487
influences this final error level. This was pointed out
in [102] where is was suggested that one might want to use
an adaptive overall gain, using a large gain for fast learn-
ing initially, and turning it down as steady state is reached
in order to reach smaller final error levels in the presence
of noise. Reference [53] created a fuzzy gain adjustment
scheme for this purpose.
Various publications have considered the use of Kalman
filtering in RC in order to reduce the effects of noise, see
for example [2, 110, 83]. Reference [100] did a detailed
study of the benefits and disadvantages of using a Kalman
filter (one should actually use a Kalman smoother as one
has data both before and after the time steps for which one
wants filtered results). Some of the conclusions are listed
below.
Random Noise Effects: Of course, using a Kalman filter
can significantly reduce the effects of random plant and
measurement noise on the output of an RC system. RC
also has the option of turning down an overall RC gain,
and this has the effect of decreasing the importance of
any one measurement, and of averaging the results from
previous periods. Therefore, turning down the gain does
488 R.W. Longman

Fig. 51. Sensitivity transfer function at addressed frequencies from command to true error without a Kalman filter (left) and with a Kalman filter
(right), when the a of (3.8) is 10% too low in the physical model.

decrease the noise level, but no reasonable reduction in

the gain will reach the error levels that can be achieved by
a Kalman filter.

Model Error: The Kalman filter can do such a good job

because it makes use of knowledge that the data comes
from a given system model. As a result model errors make
significant errors in the RC output when a Kalman filter is
introduced. The left plot in Fig. 51 from [100] considers
model (3.8) and designs the RC law with the parameter a
of the model 10% lower than the true world. The RC still
converges to a numerical zero error. When a Kalman filter
is introduced using the same 10% error in a, the result
is given in the right plot of Fig. 51 which only plots the
error at the frequencies having the addressed period. One
observes that a 10% error in this one parameter produces
more than a 10% error in the converged output at most Fig. 52. Sensitivity transfer function from a disturbance to the output
frequencies. The conclusion is that one should only use of (3.8) to the error in the output of a repetitive controller, addressed
a Kalman filter in RC when the noise level is sufficiently frequencies only.
high that the error due to noise dominates any error in your
deterministic modeling of the system. plotting only those frequencies which are addressed by the
RC design, i.e. the RC without the Kalman filter produces
Periodic Disturbances: RC has two main applications, zero error. The conclusion is that, introducing a Kalman
one is to aim for zero tracking error following a periodic filter into RC destroys the ability of the RC system to can-
command, and the other is to aim for zero tracking error cel the influence of periodic deterministic disturbances.
in the presence of a periodic disturbance. In the latter cat- At low frequencies up to a couple bandwidths of the feed-
egory, if one wants to use a Kalman filter to construct the back control system there is some attenuations, but for
state estimate and improve the output estimate, one needs most frequencies the disturbance is unaltered by the RC.
to add the same disturbance to the filter as well. Most
often one does not pretend to know the disturbance per-
fectly, but this would be necessary for the filter to produce 15. RC for Multiple Unrelated Periods
a good estimate of the state. Fig. 52 from [100] studies RC
with a Kalman filter applied to system (3.8), with a peri- The RC laws developed above apply to only one dis-
odic disturbance added to the output of (3.8). It plots the turbance (or command) period. Thus they can address
sensitivity transfer function from this output disturbance a disturbance containing a constant or DC component,
to the error in the RC output as a function of frequency, a fundamental frequency of the given period, and all
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 53. The structure of the multiple period repetitive controller.
harmonics up to the Nyquist frequency or up to the cutoff
frequency. However, there are various applications that
have multiple unrelated periods. For example, spacecraft
often use three reaction wheels as actuators for the atti-
tude control system, alternatively they can use four control
moment gyros. Any imbalance in these wheels produces
vibrations. One can use RC to cancel the vibrations at the
location of fine pointing equipment. This application ini-
tially motivated the research on matched basis function
RC discussed above [88, 89, 16, 135, 67]. Projecting onto
sines and cosines of the frequencies for each disturbance
allows it to address multiple unrelated frequencies.
Yamada and co-workers in references [139, 140]
develop a method of dealing with multiple unrelated
frequencies that builds on the usual structure of RC sys-
tems as discussed here. References [72, 73] convert their
approach to make use of the design methods presented
here. One simply needs to plug in the improved compen-
sator designed by the above techniques, the zero-phase
low-pass filter design as above, and use nearest integer
period, or include interpolation explicitly, or as part of the
low-pass filter. For simplicity consider three such periods.
The structure of the RC system is given in Fig. 53, for the
case of three unrelated periods. Note that this block dia-
gram is adjusting the command U(z) to a feedback control
system G(z), but one could reconfigure the diagram to be
adjusting the error signal as in Fig. 3, where the R(z) rep-

resents the set of Rj (z) and G(z) blocks. In Fig. 53, Y ∗ (z)
is the desired periodic output (which can be constant or
a linear combination of frequencies of the given periods),
 × [zp3 − HI3 (1 − φ3 G)]E
G(z) = F(z)G(z), and
φj H(z)Ij (z)
Rj (z) = pj
z − H(z)Ij (z)
489
is an RC law designed for the jth period, φj is a separate
gain introduced for each period, and Ij (z) is any interpola-
tor one wants to use for the jth period. In case the low-pass
filter H(z) is modified to also perform the phase adjust-
ment associated with a partial time step in the period, then
it needs a subscript j, and the interpolator can be elimi-
nated. The pj is the period in time steps if it is an integer,
or it is the nearest integer period in time steps if one uses
nearest integer in place of interpolation. If interpolation or
Hj (z) is used to adjust for a partial time step in the period,
then it again is the nearest integer time step to the actual
period. A new aspect to this design problem is that one
might want to introduce the gain φj and adjust it differently
for each frequency. No such gain was included in the orig-
inal optimized design by the methods of Sections 6 or 7.
The learning rate, however, is normally similar for differ-
ent frequencies when measured in units of the period, so
different periods learn at different rates in time steps.
From the block diagram, one can compute that

W (z) = R(z)E(z) = [(R1 + R2 + R3 )
 2
+ (R1 R2 + R2 R3 + R3 R1 )G + R1 R2 R3 G ]E(z)
(15.2)

and that (1 + RG)E = (Y ∗ − V ). Then the difference
equation of the multiperiod repetitive controller is given by
 
[zp1 − HI1 (1 − φ1 G)][zp2 − HI2 (1 − φ2 G)]

= [zp1 − HI1 ][zp2 − HI2 ][zp3 − HI3 ](YD − V )
(15.1) (15.3)
490
Fig. 54. Examples of systems with periodic measurement errors, belt steering problem (left), and computer disk drives (right).
The characteristic polynomial for the three period RC
is composed of the product of the characteristic poly-
nomials for each period. Hence, the design process is
now decoupled, and one can separately design an RC for
each period that is asymptotically stable by the methods
given previously, and the resulting three period RC will be
asymptotically stable. First, produce a single period design
that satisfies Theorem 2, being asymptotically stable for all
periods, designed as asymptotically stable without includ-
ing the interpolation, and designed with gain φ = 1. Then
when this design is used for a factor in square brackets on
the left of (15.3), with any specific period, and any chosen
reduced gain, and any needed linear or cubic interpola-
tion, one is guaranteed that all roots of that factor of the
characteristic polynomial are inside the unit circle. When
applied to all three factors, then all factors represent poly-
nomials with all roots inside the unit circle. Hence, the RC
design for multiple periods is asymptotically stable.
16. A Different Kind of RC: Eliminating
Periodic Measurement Error
There is a class of physical problems for which there is a
periodic measurement disturbance, and one would like to
eliminate these disturbances from your feedback signal.
The left part of Fig. 54 shows a belt steering system from
a copy machine. The belt is shown looking onto it, and
looking at its edge as it rolls over the drive roll. The belt
moves paper and one would like the paper, or equivalently
any mass element of the belt, to move in a straight line.
Such belts can drift to one side or the other, so there is a
control system that tips the steering roll to keep the belt
centered. The sensor for this feedback control system is
an edge sensor of the belt. Unfortunately, the belt must be
cut, and then sown together at a seam. Any inaccuracy in
the cut, and any mismatch at the seam makes the edge not
straight, and represents a measurement error which is peri-
odic. Reference [42] developed a control system to learn
R.W. Longman
to ignore the signature associated with the irregularity of
the belt edge. It worked quite well, but the approach has
low bandwidth.
There has been considerable research effort related to
tracking the written in tracks on computer disk drives. As
described earlier, the read/write head must follow these
tracks to read or write data on the disk. The tracks are put
on the disk while it is rotating, and instead of being perfect
circles, the vibrations create an irregular circle with some
higher frequency components as illustrated on the right
of Fig. 54. Reference [20] considers this to be a standard
RC problem, and seeks to find a command that makes the
feedback control system more closely follow the tracks,
allowing tracks to be more closely spaced, and the disk
to have more storage. A completely different formulation
chooses to think of the irregularities of the track radius
as measurement disturbances, and learn to eliminate them
from the position error signal (PES) used by the feedback
control system. This is a much more effective objective,
it is much easier for a control system to follow a con-
stant command than it is to follow a command with high
frequency content.
This reformulation was presented in [45] and is patented
by Seagate. Fig. 55 presents the block diagram structure.
The repetitive controller has the familiar form and transfer
function, analogous to (3.2) and (3.3), given by
U(z) = M(z)Q(z)z−p [U(z) + F(z)E(z)] (16.1)
U(z) M(z)Q(z)F(z)
L(z) = = p
E(z) z − M(z)Q(z)
where F(z) is the compensator as before. The
1 1 − z−p
Q(z) = 1 − (16.2)
p 1 − z−1
is a DC removal filter to avoid learning the DC error
portion. And
1 !
M(z) = 1 + z−p + z−2p + · · · + z−(N−1)p (16.3)
N
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
Fig. 55. Computer disk drive repetitive control system to eliminate periodic measurement error.
is a repetition based moving average filter to extract the
periodic portion of the signal for the learning update.
Note that this makes the design a higher order RC sys-
tem. The point is to average through data and positive
coefficients, all the same, are used. Note also that in this
application, there is no issue of needing a sensor to stay
synchronized. Comparing the L(z) here to the R(z) in
(3.3) we note that there is no need for interpolation in
this application. Also, we will see below that the need
for a zero-phase low-pass cutoff filter is likely to be gone
as well.
When this new repetitive controller is placed in the block
diagram, the PES E(z) is the solution of the following
difference equation analogous to (4.1)
 
zp − M(z)Q(z) [1 − F(z)S(z)] E(z)
 
= zp − zM(z)Q(z) S(z) [R(z) − W (z) − P(z)D(z)]
(16.4)
Here, R(z) is the constant reference signal for the track,
D(z) is the plant disturbance, and W (z) is the written-in
repeatable run out WI-RRO, i.e. the error deviation from
circular for the written in track. We seek to learn this error
and subtract it from the contaminated measurements.
What is very new in this problem is that in place
of the closed loop transfer function G(z) for the given
feedback control system, we have the sensitivity transfer
function of the feedback control system without the RC
block
1 the gain get small at high frequencies. And this makes
S(z) =
1 + K(z)P(z)
491
This is an extremely important difference between
RC to eliminate periodic measurement disturbances,
and the standard RC problem. Observe the following
items:
• The numerator of K(z)P(z) might come from feed-
ing a continuous time plant with a zero-order hold.
Hence, this numerator could contain zeros outside the
unit circle that are introduced by the discretization
process.
• But these zeros only appear in making up part of the
numerator of 1 + K(z)P(z). And the numerator is the
characteristic equation of the original disk drive con-
trol system, and hence should have all roots inside
the unit circle. We conclude that we do not expect to
have zeros outside the unit circle influencing our RC
design.
• The numerator of S(z) after clearing fractions, is just
the denominators of the controller and the plant, K(z)
and P(z), and one expects that each of these would have
stable characteristic polynomials.
• Therefore, the inverse of the transfer function S(z) is
also stable. Unlike the usual RC design, we should be
able to use the inverse of the transfer function making
it reasonable to design the compensator as
F(z) = cS −1 (z) (16.6)
where c is a gain to be chosen.
• Sensitivity transfer functions have special properties.
The number of zeros equals the number of poles. The
usual G(z) has more poles that zeros, and this makes
(16.5) the plots such as Fig. 17 tend to the boundary of the
492 R.W. Longman

stability region for many RC design methods. A miss-
ing pole in the model, or a missing complex conjugate
pair of poles can easily produce enough phase so that
the compensator fails to keep (4.4) satisfied all the
way to Nyquist frequency. In the sensitivity transfer
function such missing poles influence both the denom-
inator and the numerator. And it is much less likely
that they produce enough error to send the system
unstable.
• The analog of equation 4.3 is
zp E(z) = {M(z)Q(z) [1 − F(z)S(z)]}E(z)
which suggests the heuristic monotonic decay condition
analogous to (4.4) is


 
M(ejωT )Q(ejωT ) 1 − F(ejωT )S(ejωT )  < 1 ∀ ω
runout, which is dominated by the WI-RRO, the repeat-
able runout associated with the variations in the radius of
the written in tracks. The NRRO refers to non-repeatable
runout from nonrepeating error sources. And together they
form the PES or position error. The table gives the 3 − σ
values for each. The final result is that the RC law reduces
the RRO by 98% within 15 revolutions. And this cor-
responds to a 36% reduction in the 3 − σ value of the
PES. The profile learned by the repetitive controller can
be stored on the disk at the factory, and used thereafter
by the disk drive. Of course one could also use the RC
(16.7) in real time during operation of the servo track following
loop.
(16.8)

Note that the development of the generalization of

Theorem 2 to apply to higher order RC, given by
equation (13.7) applies to this case as well, since our
weights are all positive for the N previous periods.
Hence, (16.8) represents a necessary and sufficient
condition for asymptotic stability of an RC system to
eliminate periodic measurement error for all possible
periods.
Fig. 56. Polar plot of M(z)Q(z)[1 − F(z)S(z)].
Fig. 56 gives the polar plot of the function inside the
absolute values in (16.8) based on experimental frequency
response tests and the designed M(z), Q(z), F(z). If the Table 1. Comparison of the 3 − σ values of RRO, NRRO,
plot stays within the unit circle, the system is stable. For and PES
this type of RC, it appears that this can be unambiguous, PES
that there seems to be no danger of going outside the cir- 3 − σ of RRO NRRO (µ-inch)
cle. Fig. 57 presents the PES error spectrum before and
Before learning 2.456 2.146 3.262
after learning, and Table 1 gives the various error lev-
After learning 0.057 2.074 2.075
els before and after. The error contains RRO, repeatable

Fig. 57. Frequency spectrum of the PES position error before the learning process (left), and with RC designed to eliminate periodic measurement
disturbances (right).
Theory and Design of Repetitive Control Systems
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