ABSTRACT
The aim of the control system design is to improve the behavior of a physical plant through the use of a controller that conditions an error signal to generate the plant input signal. The controller designed using root locus or other suitable techniques can be implemented using analog circuits or, alternatively, in computer code using digital signal processing tools. The measurement sensor may similarly generate sampled output for feedback. This chapter explores controller design for implementation with clock-driven devices, that is, microcontrollers and computers. It discusses the models of sampled-data system, their properties, stability characterization, time response, and the analysis and controller design for such systems. The sampled-data systems operate on discrete-time, that is, the variables change values at integral multiples of the sampling period. The z-transform is the sampled-data equivalent of the Laplace transform used with continuous-time signals.
