Noniterative data-driven design of multivariable controllers

In this paper, a data-driven technique is proposed to deal with multivariable fixed-order controller design. The method is based on the Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning (VRFT) philosophy and thus does not require any model of the plant. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first noniterative method that allows one to tune either tracking and decoupling terms of a MIMO controller. Unlike standard VRFT for SISO systems, extended instrumental variables and variance weighting are used to counteract the effect of noise and achieve consistent controller estimate with a single set of input-output data. The proposed strategy is validated on three banchmark examples.