Predictive and robust control strategies applied to ground antenna systems

A mobile antenna system requires precise control that combines good trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection. The system has several operating scenarios, demanding a robust control design that ensures good performance and stability for a set of uncertain models. Moreover, ground stations are mainly outdoor operating systems, and they are subject to wind gusts that impact the accuracy of the position control. This paper presents a study using predictive control and robust controllers (CRONE and H ∞ strategies) to assess the application feasibility of these methodologies in tracking antenna systems. The control system design of both CRONE and H ∞ strategies are carried out in frequency domain. Time domain analysis demonstrates that both robust controllers yield very similar results, ensuring excellent stability and outstanding performances in tracking trajectory operation. The choice of control strategy ultimately depends on the designer’s expertise, software/hardware requirements, and the complexity of the system model, with an advantage of the CRONE controller in terms of robustness and practical implementation. Simulation results are validated on tracking satellite trajectories by comparing MPC, CRONE and H ∞ controls with various robustness tests. • Predictive control uses current states, predictions and constraints to generate an optimized control signal as it minimizes input/output constraints, but it does not consider couplings. • Robust control design is compared between the two most well-known strategies, namely CRONE control and H-infinity control. • An application illustrates the tracking of ground antenna systems, namely for satellite trajectory, with a comparison of MPC, H-infinity and CRONE strategies, with and without wind gust disturbances.