Maglev platform networked control: A Profibus DP application

This paper addresses a practical networked based control application. A Profibus DP is considered in order to coordinate a triangular maglev platform. The control of this magnetic levitation process is a complicated system from an control engineering point of view due to its unstable, non-minimum phase and non-linear nature; the difficulty is growing up because the bandwidth limitation and some other problems introduced by the network which consideration is necessary in order to prepare control, supervision and coordination of local loops tasks. A rude local classical control and a refinated based LMI solution in remote side allow to solve this problem where the packets have a variable time delays compromising performance or even stability. The results shows a good stabilization and reference position accuracy even when the operating point is changing with an external load.