Delay-Compound-Compensation Control for Photoelectric Tracking System Based on Improved Smith Predictor Scheme

High control bandwidth is usually restricted in a photoelectric tracking system (PTS) based on a Charge-Couple Device(CCD) with time delay, which hinders a good tracking performance. Generally, a model-based delay-compensation controller called Smith predictor (SP) can help increase the controller gain to promote the bandwidth by separating delay from the control loop. However, the performance promotion is insufficient because the delay still stays in the forward channel which causes errors between output and input. And the increase of the controller gain is still limited due to the effect of model mismatch on stability. In this paper, to solve the problems, a delay-compound-compensation control (DCCC) based on improved SP by trajectory prediction and velocity feedforward is proposed. The additional trajectory prediction is used to further eliminate the effect of delay existing in the forward channel. The additional velocity feedforward is used to further reform the transfer characteristics limited by the controller gain. A Kalman filter-based design method of trajectory prediction is presented and the optimal design principle of feedback and feedforward controllers is given in the face of model mismatch. Experiments demonstrate that the DCCC is valid and could greatly promote the tracking performance in the low frequency.