A Nonlinear State Feedback Tracking Controller for Open Channel Irrigation Systems

The majority of human activities requires water, which is mostly transported and supplied using open channel irrigation systems (OCIS). Their optimal operation requires an accurate control to reject disturbances that can arise under day-to-day operation (e.g., rainfall, leaks, and theft) and thus guarantee user satisfaction and safety. This paper proposes the design of a control strategy, we use part of the OSL-QIB methodology previously introduced by Arango et al. (2024) with a linear parameter varying term (LPV) to handle non-linear affine terms more easily than other commonly used methods, such as Feedback Linearization. From a phenomenological point of view, the considered model to construct the nonlinear control strategy is based on material and energy balances, whose advantage is to avoid delays (very common in OCIS modeling) and capture important phenomena that occurs in the process. The proposed controller is tested in the first two pools of the Corning channel, obtaining satisfactory results (disturbance rejection and tracking).