ISA

TRANSACTIONS
ISA Transactions 41 2002 511520

Design PID controllers for desired time-domain

or frequency-domain response
Weidong Zhang,* Yugeng Xi, Genke Yang, Xiaoming Xu
Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200030, PRC

Received 10 July 2001; accepted 8 February 2002

Abstract
Practical requirements on the design of control systems, especially process control systems, are usually specified in
terms of time-domain response, such as overshoot and rise time, or frequency-domain response, such as resonance peak
and stability margin. Although numerous methods have been developed for the design of the proportional-integralderivative PID controller, little work has been done in relation to the quantitative time-domain and frequency-domain
responses. In this paper, we study the following problem: Given a nominal stable process with time delay, we design
a suboptimal PID controller to achieve the required time-domain response or frequency-domain response for the
nominal system or the uncertain system. An H PID controller is developed based on optimal control theory and the
parameters are derived analytically. Its properties are investigated and compared with that of two developed suboptimal
controllers: an H 2 PID controller and a Maclaurin PID controller. It is shown that all three controllers can provide the
quantitative time-domain and frequency-domain responses. 2002 ISAThe Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society.
Keywords: Linear system; Time delay; PID controller; Optimal control; Time-domain response

1. Introduction
Most industrial processes are controlled by
proportional-integral-derivative PID controllers.
The popularity of PID controllers can be attributed
partly to their robust performance in a wide range
of operating conditions and partly to their functional simplicity, which allows process engineers
to operate them in a simple and straightforward
manner. To implement such a controller, three parameters must be determined for the given processes, and many papers have been devoted to this
problem. For example, see 1 6. Early study on
the design and tuning of a PID controller is mainly
based on classical control theory. In recent years,
*Corresponding author.
fax:
86.21.62826946.
wdzhang@mail.sjtu.edu.cn

Tel:

86.21.62933329;
E-mail
address:

the focus of the study is on the optimal or suboptimal design of PID controllers. 7 and 8 presented a PID controller by Pade approximation in
the framework of internal model control IMC. In
fact, the controller is an H 2 suboptimal controller.
9 provided a PID controller by approximating an
IMC controller with a Maclaurin series. 10 provided a suboptimal PID controller for integrator/
time delay processes. The superiority of these
methods is that the controller is derived analytically. The control system can be designed and
tuned by formulas and thus the design and tradeoff
are significantly simplified.
Although numerous methods have been developed, little work has been done in relation to the
quantitative time-domain and frequency-domain
responses. As we know, practical requirements on
the design of control systems, especially on process control systems, are usually specified in terms

0019-0578/2002/$ - see front matter 2002 ISAThe Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society.

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Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

Fig. 1. Unity feedback control loop.

of time-domain response, such as overshoot and

rise time, or frequency-domain response, such as
resonance peak and stability margin. It can be simply formulated as follows: Given a nominal plant
and desired time-domain response or frequencydomain response, we design a PID controller to
meet these indexes. In this paper, an H PID controller is first presented based on optimal control
theory. The properties of the controller are then
investigated and compared with an H 2 PID controller and a Maclaurin PID controller. It is shown
that these three controllers can provide quantitative time-domain response and frequency-domain
response. The work is of significance in that it can
establish a relationship between the classical design requirement and that of optimal design methods, and provide insight into control system design.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2
the suboptimal H PID controller is derived analytically. The H 2 PID controller and Maclaurin
PID controller are briefly introduced. The performance degree is defined and the quantitative timedomain response and frequency-domain response
are discussed in Section 3. Finally, the paper is
concluded in Section 4 with a brief discussion of
the results.
2. Controller design
Consider the unity feedback control system
( s ) denotes the plant and
shown in Fig. 1, where G
C ( s ) denotes the controller. In the context of pro ( s ) is usually described
cess control, the process G
by the following model or the nominal plant
G(s):

G s

Ke s
,
s1

where K is the gain, is the time constant, and is

the time delay. We define the transfer function

Fig. 2. IMC structure.

Q s

C s
1G s C s

and we have

C s

Q s
.
1G s Q s

In the nominal case, the unity feedback loop can

be equivalent to the well-known IMC structure depicted in Fig. 2. The sensitivity transfer function
of the closed-loop system can be written as

S s

1
1G s Q s
1G s C s

and the complementary sensitivity transfer function as

T s

G s C s
G s Q s .
1G s C s

T ( s ) is just the closed-loop transfer function.

It is well known that any model obtained by
using experimental procedures involves uncertainty in its parameters. For the low-order models
used in many practical applications, the uncertainty is expressed in a parametric fashion. The
parameters of the simplified model used to approximate a usually high-order dynamics are
known to lie in an interval. The mean value of
each parameter is chosen to represent its nominal
value, often used to obtain nominal plant and controller parameters 8,9. For example, the plant is
e s
K
s
G
s1

with

K ,K ,
K

, ,

, .

The midrange plant is chosen as the model:

Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

Ke s
,
G s
s1

where

K K
,
2

,
2

G s K

1 s/2
,
s1 1 s/2

which will be regarded as the nominal plant utilized to derive the H PID controller. The error
introduced by the approximation is included in uncertainty, which will be discussed later.
Instead of a numerical method, an analytical design procedure is developed for the given plant. It
is seen that W ( s ) S ( s ) is analytical in the open
right half plane. According to the well-known
maximum modulus theorem, a fundamental fact
concerning complex functions, W ( s ) S ( s ) does
not attain its maximum value at an interior point
of the open right half plane. On the other hand, the
G ( s ) has a zero at s2/ in the open right half
plane. Thus, for all Q ( s ) s,
W s 1G s Q s W 2/ .

However, W ( s ) has a pole on the imaginary axis.

To obtain a finite infinity norm, a constraint will
be imposed on the design procedure:
s0

s1 1 s/2
.
K

Obviously Q im ( s ) is improper. Now we use the

following low-pass filter to roll Q im ( s ) off at high
frequency:

J s

1
,
s1 2

0.

Then

Q s Q im s J s

s1 1 s/2
.
K s1 2

11

As tends to be zero, the controller tends to be

optimal. The corresponding controller of the unity
feedback loop is

C s

1 s1 1 s/2
.
Ks 2 s2 /2

12

The suboptimal H PID controller is derived analytically. Comparing the above controller with the
following practical PID controller,

C s K C 1

1
1
T D s
.
T Is
T F s1

13

The parameters of the new PID controller are

T F

T I ,
2

2
,
2 /2
K C

T D

,
2T I

TI
.
K 2 /2

If the practical PID controller is in the form of

min W s S s min W s 1G s Q s

lim 1G s Q s 0.

Q im s

Consequently we have

/2.

In other words, we must guarantee that S ( s )

( 1G ( s ) Q ( s )) has a zero at s0 to cancel the
pole of W ( s ) . With the constraint, the unique optimal Q im ( s ) is obtained as follows:

.
2

A central objective in automatic control is that a

physical quantity is made to behave in a prescribed way by using the error between the system
output and the setpoint input. This gives rise to the
optimal control. Assume that the optimal performance index is H optimal, i.e., minW(s)S(s) ,
where W ( s ) is a weighting function. W ( s ) should
be selected such that the 2-norm boundary of the
system input is normalized by unity. That is,
W ( s ) 1/s for a unit step setpoint. The performance index implies that the controller is designed
to minimize the worst error resulting from system
inputs. With Pade approximation, we have

513

10

C s K C 1

1 T D s1
,
T I s T F s1

the parameters of the PID controller are

T F

2
,
2 /2
K C

T I ,

T D ,
2

TI
.
K 2 /2

14

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Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

If the practical PID controller is in the form of

C s K C 1

T Ds
1

,
T I s T F s1

T F

15

,
2

K C

the parameters of the PID controller are

T F
T D

2
,
2 /2

T F ,
2T I

T I T F ,
2
K C

TI
.
K 2 /2

G s G s G s ,
where G ( s ) contains all nonminimum phase factors, G ( 0 ) 1, and G ( s ) is the minimum phase
portion of the model. The IMC controller is then
given by the following formula 8:

16

Since a time delay is included in the controller,

it cannot be directly implemented. Many methods
have been presented to approximate the controller by a rational transfer function, such as a numerical method, Pade approximation, Taylor series, Maclaurin series, and so on 11. The H 2 suboptimal PID controller given by 7 utilizes a Pade
approximation. The resultant controller is

1 s1 1 s/2
Ks s/2

and the PID controller parameters are

,
2T I

TI
.
K

1
f 0 2
s .
f 0 f 0 s
s
2!

17

18

Taking the first three terms, we obtain the Maclaurin PID controller, of which the parameters are 9

T F 0,
T D

T I

2
,
2

1
,
2
3T I

K C

TI
.
K

Sometimes, one may use a second-order model.

The above methods can be directly extended to
this case. Since the design procedure is almost the
same, only the results are given here. Suppose that
the model is

G s

where n is chosen so that the controller is biproper, that is, both Q ( s ) and 1/Q ( s ) are proper.
For the given plant we have

C s

C s

1
,
s1 n G s

s1
C s
,
s1e s

T D

Let C ( s ) ( s1 ) / ( s1e s ) f ( s ) /s.

The controller can be expanded in a Maclaurin
series as

Since Eq. 13 is used in many papers, for comparison, only this form is considered in the later
part of this paper.
If a conventional PID controller is installed, the
parameter T F has been determined. Usually T F
0.1T D 4. In this case, one can also use the
above rules by simply omitting the new T F . Then,
similar results will be obtained.
Both the H 2 PID controller and Maclaurin PID
controller are based on the result of IMC. In IMC,
the plant is factored as

Q s

T I ,
2

Ke s
.
1 s1 2 s1

19

Utilizing the Taylor series, the PID controller parameters designed by the proposed method are

T F

2
,
2

T I 1 2 ,

K C

T D

1 2
,
TI

TI
.
K 2

20

The H 2 PID controller parameters are

T F

,
2

T D 1 2 ,

T I
K C

1 2
,
1 2

TI
.
K 2

The Maclaurin PID controller parameters are

21

Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

T F 0,
T D

2 2 2
T I 1 2
,
2 2

and

1 2 3 / 126
2 2 2

,
2 2
TI
K C

TI
.
K 2

22

3. Discussion
All three PID controllers are suboptimal. The
design procedure shows that they relate closely
and each has its own features. The difference between the Maclaurin PID controller and the H 2
and H PID controllers is obvious. The difference
between the H 2 PID controller and the H PID
controller lies in the manner they cancel the poles
of the plant. The proposed H controller tends to
cancel all poles of the process while the H 2 controller tends to cancel the poles of the minimum
phase part of the process.

T s

3.1. Example 1
The difference between the H 2 PID controller
and the H PID controller is illustrated in this example. Consider the plant described by

e s
.
s1

The nominal plant with Pade approximation is

G s

10.5s
.
s1 10.5s

Only one pole of the nominal plant is canceled.

Note that there is an adjustable parameter in
the three PID controllers. It has been shown by
some researchers that relates directly to the
nominal performance and robustness of the system. This paper will show that the quantitative
time-domain response and frequency-domain response can be gained by adjusting .
Consider the H PID controller again. We regard the error introduced by the approximation as
uncertainty. The actual plant is in the form of a
first-order plus time delay. Then

T s

1 s/2 e s
2 s 2 2 /2 s 1 s/2 e s
23

and

S s

G s

515

2 s 2 2 /2 s
.
2 s 2 2 /2 s 1 s/2 e s
24

It is seen that T ( s ) does not depend on K and .

This implies that the setpoint response for the
closed-loop system relates only to and . The
similar result also exists for the H 2 PID controller.
Strictly speaking, the setpoint response of the system with the Maclaurin PID controller relates to
not only and but . Since the difference is very

10.5s
.
s1 10.5s

The H method yields that

Q s

s1 10.5s
s1 2

and the nominal complementary sensitivity transfer function is

T s

10.5s
.
s1 2

We see that both of the two poles of the nominal

plant are canceled. For the H 2 controller we have

Q s

s1
s1

Fig. 3. Responses of system A. Solid line: H ; dashed

line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

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Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

Fig. 4. Responses of system B. Solid line: H ; dashed

line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

small, it can be considered that its setpoint response relates only to and .

Fig. 6. Quantitative rise time. Solid line: H ; dashed line:

Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

A unit step setpoint is added at t0s and a unit

step load disturbance at t6s or 60s. The parameter in all the three controllers is adjustable. To
obtain a fair comparison, the parameter is adjusted
such that the closed-loop responses have the same

overshoot. The resultant parameters are 0.41

for the H 2 controller, 0.46 for the H PID
controller, and 0.42 for the Maclaurin PID
controller. The closed-loop responses are shown in
Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. For the two plants, the H 2 controller and the H PID controller have almost the
same response. For the plant with a small ratio of
and , A, the H 2 controller and the H PID
controller have faster rise times and settling times
than that of the Maclaurin PID controller, and for
the plant with a large ratio of and , B, the H 2
controller and the H PID controller have a slower
settling time and disturbance rejection.
It is found that the response shapes of the H 2
controller and the H PID controller for the two
plants are almost the same. This validates the

Fig. 5. Quantitative overshoot. Solid line: H ; dashed

line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

Fig. 7. Quantitative ISE. Solid line: H ; dashed line:

Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

3.2. Example 2
The three suboptimal PID controllers are compared in this example. Consider the following two
plants:

A: G s

e 0.5s
,
s1

B: G s

e 5s
.
s1

Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

above analysis. We define as the performance

degree. It is seen that the overshoot and the ratio
of rise time and are determined only by the ratio
of the performance degree and Figs. 5 and 6.
The break in Fig. 6 is caused by the difference of
the definition of the rise time for systems with
overshoot and without overshoot. The empirical
formulas for estimating the two indices can also be
given. For example, the formulas of the H PID
controller are as follows:

Overshoot

0.86 / 3 14.21 / 2

8.72/ 1.86, 0.1/ 0.59

0, 0.59/ 1.2,
25
Rise time

30.34 / 3 24.63 / 2

8.48/ 0.45, 0.1/ 0.59

3.97/ 1.02, 0.59/ 1.2.
26
In 12,13, nonovershoot and monotone nondecreasing response is studied. For the three controllers it is very easy to get such a response.
Both the H 2 control and the H control relate to
the integral square error ISE. The H 2 control
minimizes the ISE for a particular input and the
H control minimizes the worst ISE resulting
from any two-norm bounded inputs. It is found

Fig. 8. Quantitative resonance peak. Solid line: H ;

dashed line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

517

that the ratio of ISE and is also determined by

the performance degree Fig. 7. This implies that
the relationship between the classical performance
indices and the optimal performance indices is established.
In frequency-domain analysis, one important
concept is the resonance peak, that is, the maximum modulus of the closed-loop transfer function.
In 14, it is referred to as the maximum log
modulus and utilized to design PID controller. A
commonly used specification for it is 2dB. The
quantitative relationship between the resonance
peak and the performance degree is shown in Fig.
8.
Another important concept in frequency domain
is stability margin, on which numerous methods
are based see, for example, 15. The magnitude
stability margin and phase stability margin provide
intuitive tools for control system design and are
very familiar to engineers. The quantitative relationship between the stability margin and the performance degree is shown in Figs. 9 and 10.
Recently, 16 proposed a new frequencydomain index for PID controller design,

1/max Re G j C j ,
which involves both the magnitude stability margin and phase stability margin to a certain extent.
It is found that there also exists the quantitative
relationship between the new index and the performance degree Fig. 11.
Unfortunately, the simple quantitative relationship comes into existence only for setpoint response. The transfer function from the load distur-

Fig. 9. Quantitative magnitude margin. Solid line: H ;

dashed line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

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Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

Fig. 12. Quantitative perturbance peak.

Fig. 10. Quantitative phase margin. Solid line: H ;
dashed line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H 2 .

bance to the system output is G ( s ) S ( s ) . Thus, the

disturbance response relates not only to and ,
but K and . We define the perturbance peak to be
the maximum output caused by the disturbance
10. For the H controller the relationship is
shown in Fig. 12.
For the second-order model, the closed-loop response relates both 1 and 2 . If one of them is
determined, a similar quantitative relationship also
exists, but not so clearly.
There always exists uncertainty in practice. Suppose that the norm-bounded uncertainty is described by

s G s
G
m j ,
G s

27

Fig. 11. Quantitative new index. Solid line: H ; dashed

line: Maclaurin; dotted line: H2 .

where ( ) is the uncertainty profile. Let S ( s )

and T ( s ) be the sensitivity transfer function and
the complementary sensitivity transfer function of
the approximated system, respectively. The robust
stability is met if and only if
T j 1,

28

This implies that arbitrary robust stability can be

gained by increasing the performance degree .
Assume that the performance is W ( s ) S ( s )
5 . Then, the robust performance is met if and
only if
W j S j /5 T j 1,

.
29

The quantitative uncertainty profile that guarantees robust performance for an H PID controller
is shown in Fig. 13.
In classical control theory, the controller is usually designed for the nominal performance specification and used for the control of the uncertain
plant. If a good model can be obtained, the esti-

Fig. 13. Quantitative uncertainty profile.

Weidong Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions 41 (2002) 511520

mates given by the above study are in good agreement with the actual time-domain responses. If the
uncertainty scope is large, one may hope to know
whether the required performance is obtained or
not. Eqs. 28 and 29 give a perfect estimate.
However, they are more mathematical than practical and very inconvenient. As a matter of fact, we
usually wish to estimate the worst case response i.e., the gain and time delay are at their
upper limits, while the time constant is at its lower
limit or the range of the closed-loop response.
17 recently developed a method for designing
IMC systems with parametric uncertainty. First, a
specified value M p is chosen based on the maximum desired overshoot, or the worst case overshoot. Second, the magnitude of the complementary sensitivity transfer function is designed to be
equal to or less than M p. For example, for the
worst case overshoot 10%, M p1.05. By solving T ( j ) M p, a unique solution on can be
obtained.
Here, an alternative method is proposed to estimate the worst case response or the range of the
closed-loop response of the proposed controller.
Assume that we hope to achieve the worst case
overshoot of 5%. The new procedure is as follows:
i
ii
iii

Design the controller for the nominal

plant. For 5% overshoot, 0.5.
Substitute the nominal plant by the

worst case plant K e s / ( s1 ) .

Increase the performance degree
monotonically until the overshoot is
equal to 5%.

For system with time delay, the typical step in

iii is 0.01, and for systm without time delay, the
typical step in iii is 0.01. This procedure can
easily be performed in Matlab with SIMULINK.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, an efficient H optimal method for
designing a PID controller was developed. Explicit formulas are derived analytically. The result
is similar to the H 2 PID controller, but different in
the manner of canceling the poles of the plant.
The most important contribution of this paper is
that the concept performance degree is defined
and the quantitative relationship between the
closed-loop response and the performance degree
is given. In systems with the H 2 PID controller or

519

the H PID controller, the relationship is exact,

and for the Maclaurin PID controller, the relationship roughly exists. Thus, all three controllers can
be designed for desired time-domain response or
frequency-domain response. The given quantitative relationship between the classical performance indices and the optimal performance indices makes it possible to build a bridge between
the classical design method and modern design
methods.
For practical purposes, the H 2 PID controller
may be the most convenient one, because it has a
linear relationship with many performance indices.
Since there always exists uncertainty in practice,
the quantitative design for the system with parametric uncertainty is also discussed, and a new
design method is proposed to estimate the worst
case response or the range of the closed-loop response of the proposed controller.
It is also shown that the suboptimal PID gives a
satisfactory approximation to the exact time delay
compensated scheme. This implies that the PID
controller can provide relatively good response for
systems with time delay, even when the time delay
is very large.
Acknowledgments
This project was supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China Grant
No. 69804007 and the National Key Technologies
R&D Program in the Tenth Five-Year Plan Grant
No. 2001BA201A04.
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Weidong Zhang was born in

the Peoples Republic of China
in 1967. He received the BS,
MS, and Ph.D degree from
Zhejiang University in 1990,
1993, and 1996, respectively.
He worked in National Key
Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology as a postdoctoral research fellow before
joining Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1998 as an associate
professor. Since 1999 he has
been a professor at the Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiaotong University. He is the author of
68 papers. His current research interests include process control, robust control, field-bus, and digital signal processing.

Yugeng Xi was born in the

Peoples Republic of China in
1946. He graduated from
Haerbin Engineering College
in 1968. From 1979 to 1984 he
was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Control Technology,
Technical University Munich,
Germany, where he received
the Dr.-Ing. degree in 1984.
Since then, he has been working at Shanghai Jiaotong University. He received awards for
Achievement in Science and
Technology six times by the State Commission of Education and the
Shanghai government. Prof. Xi was the vice chair of the IFAC TC
Large Scale Systems and is now the vice president of the Chinese
Association of Automation. His current research interests include predictive control, robust control, robot control, and computer vision.

Genke Yang was born in the

Peoples Republic of China in
1963. He received his B.Sc.
and M.Sc. degrees in mathematics, and Ph.D. degree in
systems engineering. He is currently an associate professor in
the department of automation,
Shanghai Jiaotong University.
He is the author of 40 papers.
His current research interests
include modeling, analysis,
and control theory of discrete
event dynamic systems and hybrid dynamic systems.

Xiaoming Xu was born in the

Peoples Republic of China in
1957. He received the BS degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology
in 1982, and the MS and Ph.D
degrees from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1984 and
1987, respectively. From 1988
to 1990 he worked in Germany
as an Alexander von Humboldt
research fellow. He joined
Shanghai Jiaotong University
in 1990 as a professor in the
department of automation. Since 1997 he has been the deputy principal of Shanghai Jiaotong University. He is the head of numerous state
research projects and the author of numerous papers. His current research interests include control theory, artificial intelligence, computer
networking, and digital signal processing.