Volume 2 Special Issue ISSN 2079-8407

Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org

A Wavelet Based Multi-Resolution Controller

Leena G. Jeevana, Vini Malikb
a b
Department of electrical and electronics Engg ., Department of electronics n communication Engg.
Manav Rachna International University, IILM engg. College
a b
leenagjeevan@rediffmail.com vinimalik@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT
In this paper, wavelet based PID controller is studied. There are two different approaches by which a frequency analysis of
a time dependent signal can be affected, locally in time. The first procedure is the short-time FT, the second is the ‘wavelet
Transform' in which high frequency component are studied with sharper time resolution than low frequency components.
The similarities and differences between these two are studied. The principle of PID control system is simple and function
is robust if it were well tuned, however it tends to fall in sustaining oscillations state because of bad tuning in actual plant.
The non-linear and time-varying natures of the process together with the large disturbances of several types were the key
challenge for the control design. A controller based on multi- resolution decomposition using wavelets is presented in the
paper. The controller is similar to proportional integral derivative controller in principle and application. The principle of
PID control system is simple and function is robust if it were well tuned, however, it tends to fall in sustaining oscillation
state because of bad tuning in actual plant. Also, the output from a control system represents the cumulative effect of
uncertainties such as measurement noise, frictional variations and external torque disturbances which manifest at different
scales. These scales are then used to compensate for the uncertainties in the plant. The wavelet is used to decompose the
error signal into signals at different scales. These signals are then used to compensate for the uncertainties in the plant.

Keywords: Wavelets, Wavelet controller, PID control, Noise identification

I. INTRODUCTION of sustaining oscillations may be clearly separated and

Generally, control system is having a feedback
structure, where the corrective function is designed to
work for minimizing deviation from the target value. But
as for the actual control system, improper behaviour
would be yielded due to poor tuning resulting in low
adjustment capability [2]. The pid controller has been
around for more than eighty years and is still widely used
across the industry. The reason for its longevity can be
traced to the fact that it is easy to implement in analog
circuits and is intuitive, which makes it easy to tune. On
the other hand, this very simplicity limits the performance
of PID controllers. In some cases, due to improper control
behaviour, a part of signal is additionally applied as a
positive feedback that may newly cause not only lowered
adjustment capability but also fluctuation deviation
(sustaining oscillations). The wavelet transform,
developed earlier as a mathematical tool has in recent
years been used in various industrial applications.
Wavelets possess two properties that make them
especially valuable for data analysis: they reveal local
properties of data and they allow multi scale analysis.
Recently, some work has been reported on the use of time-
frequency localization of wavelet transform in control
industry. In this paper multi resolution property of wavelet
transform is used to design a controller. The controller is
analogous to the well-known proportional-integral-
derivative controller is represented.
The wavelet transform provides another vehicle
in developing high performance controllers based on PID
principles. The variations caused by control system is
characterised by its sustaining oscillations. By
transforming time series data into frequency, components
defects of control system would be detected. Hitherto,
frequency analyses of any signals have been mainly
carried out by means of fast Fourier transform (FFT). FFT
analysis is applied to diagnose oscillating behaviours and
the method for the root cause identification is established.
Now, FFT is challenged by a new method of frequency
analysis i.e. Wavelet transform (WT).
In section II, wavelet transform and its
decomposition are given. In section III, a brief
introduction of PID, its tuning methods and the framework
of an MRPID is given in section III. Finally some
concluding remarks are included in section IV.
II. WAVELET TRANSFORM
II.1 Contrast against Fourier
Transform
Fourier transform decomposes a signal to
complex exponential functions of different frequencies. In
Fourier Transform, the signal x
(t) is multiplied with an exponential term, at some
frequency ‘f’ and then integrated over all times. The
exponential term can also be written as:
Cos (2.pi.f.t)+ j sin (2.pi.f.t) ..(1.1)
The above expression has a real part of cosine of
frequency f, and an imaginary part of sine of frequency f.
So what we are actually doing is, multiplying the original
signal with a complex expression which has sines and
cosines of frequency f. then we integrate this product [2].
If the result of this integration is a large value then we say
that: the signal x(t), has a domain spectral component of
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 Volume 2 Special Issue
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.
http://www.cisjournal.org
frequency ‘f’. this means that major portion of this signal
is composed of frequency f. If the integration result is a
small value, then this means that the signal does not have a
major frequency component of frequency in it. If this
integration result is zero, then the signal does not contain
the frequency at all. So, the information provided by the
integral, corresponds to all time instances, since the
integration from minus infinity to plus infinity overtime. It
follows that no matter where in time the component with
frequency ‘f’ appears, it will affect the result of integration
as well. This is why Fourier transform is not suitable if the
signal has time varying frequency i.e. the signal is non-
stationary.[3]
Fourier transforms (transformation to frequency
domain) and wavelet transform (transformation to time-
frequency domain) are carried out to compare these two
transformations. The case of Fourier transform is a power
spectrum with 2-dimensional coordinate system where
frequency (or period) at the abscissa axis and power
(square of amplitude) at the ordinate axis is drawn in the
frequency domain where the time factor is lost.
On the other hand, in case of wavelet transform,
3-dimensional information (containing time factor)is
provided, where time at the abscissa axis, frequency(or
period) at the ordinate axis and amplitude intensity by
contour lines with different hues are presented.
II.2 Wavelets and Multi -Resolution
Decomposition
A wavelet is defined like a wave of very short
duration. The wavelet function ψ(t) is called mother
wavelet because different wavelets are generated from it,
by its dilation to contraction and translation, these are
called daughter wavelet ψ a.b (τ) and its mathematical
representation is
ψ a.b (τ) = ψ(t-b) a>0; a,b₃R;τ=(t-b)/a..(1.2)
Where a is the dilation variable and b is the translation
variable. There are different mother wavelets like: Haar,
Mexican Hat, Morlet, Meyer, Daubechies, Rasp1 and
others more.
Some well-known wavelets are:
1. Mexican hat: useful for detection in computer
vision. It is the second derivative of a Gaussian
function.
2. Haar: The first wavelet, introduced in 1909.
Its simple definition is helpful for computing
wavelet transforms, but because it is not
continuous, it is not as useful as other wavelets
for analyzing continuous signals.
3. Daubechies-2p: Wavelets with p vanishing
moments, to represent poly-nomials of degree
at most p − 1. A Daubechies-2 wavelet is
equivalent to the Haar wavelet. As p increases,
signals can be represented using fewer
coefficients, due to fewer scales being required.
A wavelet family is a collection of
ISSN 2079-8407
functions obtained by shifting and dilating the graph of a
wavelet.
ψa,b (τ) = 1/√a ψ ( (t−b)/a) ,..(1.3)
Where b is the shift or center of ψa,b , and a is
the scale. Alternatively, the scaling factor 1/a may be used.
If a > 1, then ψa,b is obtained by stretching the graph of ψ,
and if a < 1, then the graph of ψ is contracted. The value a
corresponds to the notion of frequency in Fourier analysis.
Wavelet transform can treat time and frequency
simultaneously in time-frequency domain. The wavelet
transform seems to provide another vehicle in developing
high performance controllers based on PID principles.
The basic idea of multi-resolution analysis is to
represent a function as a limit of successive
approximations.[3][4] Each of these successive
approximations is a smoother version of the original
function with more and more of the finer details added.
Consider a continuous signal f (t) and generate the
following sequence of approximation. The continuous
wavelet transform was computed by changing the scale of
analysis window, shifting the window in time, multiplying
by the signal, and integrating over all times. In multi
resolution analysis, filters of different cut-off frequencies
are used to analyze the signal at different scales. The
signal is passed through a series of high pass filters to
analyze the high frequencies, and it is passed through a
series of low pass filters to analyse the low frequencies.
The resolution of the signal, which is a measure of the
amount of detail information in the signal, is changed by
the filtering operations, and the scale is changed by the up
sampling and down sampling operations. Each
approximation is expressed as a weighted sum of the
shifted versions of the same function.
Subsampling a signal corresponds to reducing the
sampling rate, or removing some of the samples of the
signal. For example, subsampling by two refers to
dropping every other sample of the signal. Subsampling
by a factor n reduces the number of samples in the signal n
times. Upsampling a signal corresponds to increasing the
sampling rate of a signal by adding new samples to the
signal.for example, upsampling by two refers to adding a
new sample, usually a zero or an interpolated
value,between every two samples of the
signal.Upsampling a signal by a factor of n increasesthe
number to samples in the signal by a factor of n.
Although it not the only possible choice, DWT
coefficients are usually sampled from the CWT on a
dyadic grid, i.e., s0 = 2 and τ 0 = 1, yielding s=2j and τ
=k*2j. This sequence will be denoted by x[n], where n is
an integer. The procedure starts with passing this signal
(sequence) through a half band digital lowpass filter with
impulse response h[n]. Filtering a signal corresponds to
the mathematical operation of convolution of the signal
with the impulse response of the filter.
The convolution operation in discrete time is
defined as follows:
(1.4)
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 Volume 2 Special Issue
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.
http://www.cisjournal.org
A half band lowpass filter removes all
frequencies that are above half of the highest frequency in
the signal.
Fig. 1 Subband Coding Algorithm
For example, if a signal has a maximum of 1000 Hz
component, then half band low pass filtering removes all
the frequencies above 500 Hz.
This process can mathematically express as:
(1.5)
III. MULTI-RESOLUTION PID
CONTROLLER
III.1 Introduction: PID Controller and
its tuning
In general, a PID controller takes as its input the
error (e), acts on the error to generate a control output (u),
as shown in following equation:
u= K p e(t)+K i ∫e(t)dt+K d de(t)/dt (1.6)
Where K p, K i and K d are the pid gains to be selected. It is
this error based design philosophy that has made the PID a
successful controller in industrial settings, where the plant
is often highly nonlinear, uncertain and time varying.
The proportional term is given by:
ISSN 2079-8407
P out= K p e(t)
A high proportional gain results in a large change
in the output for a given change in the error. If the
proportional gain is too high, the system can become
unstable. In contrast, a small gain results in a small output
response to a large input error, and a less responsive (or
sensitive) controller. If the proportional gain is too low,
the control action may be too small when responding to
system disturbances. Summing the instantaneous error
over time (integrating the error) gives the accumulated
offset that should have been corrected previously. The
accumulated error is then multiplied by the integral gain
and added to the controller output. The magnitude of the
contribution of the integral term to the overall control
action is determined by the integral gain,
Ki.
The integral term is given by:
I out = K i ∫e(t)
The integral term (when added to the
proportional term) accelerates the movement of the
process towards setpoint and eliminates the residual
steady-state error that occurs with a proportional only
controller. However, since the integral term is responding
to accumulated errors from the past, it can cause the
present value to overshoot the setpoint value (cross over
the setpoint and then create a deviation in the other
direction). The rate of change of the process error is
calculated by determining the slope of the error over time
and multiplying this rate of change by the derivative gain
K d . The magnitude of the contribution of the derivative
term to the overall control action is termed the derivative
gain, K d .
The derivative term is given by: Dout= K d
de(t)/dt
The derivative term slows the rate of change of
the controller output and this effect is most noticeable
close to the controller setpoint. Hence, derivative control
is used to reduce the magnitude of the overshoot produced
by the integral component and improve the combined
controller-process stability. However, differentiation of a
signal amplifies noise and thus this term in the controller
is highly sensitive to noise in the error term, and can cause
a process to become unstable if the noise and the
derivative gain are sufficiently large.
The proportional, integral, and derivative terms
are summed to calculate the output of the PID controller.
Loop tuning
Tuning a control loop is the adjustment of its
control parameters (gain/proportional band, integral
gain/reset, derivative gain/rate) to the optimum values for
the desired control response. Stability (bounded
oscillation) is a basic requirement. The choice of method
will depend largely on whether or not the loop can be
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 Volume 2 Special Issue ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org

taken "offline" for tuning, and the response time of the
system. If the system can be taken offline, the best tuning
method often involves subjecting the system to a step
change in input, measuring the output as a function of
time, and using this response to determine the control
parameters.
TABLE 1
PID controllers, when used alone, can give poor
performance when the PID loop gains must be reduced so
that the control system does not overshoot, oscillate about
the control set point value. They also have difficulties in
the presence of non-linearity, may trade off regulation
versus response time, do not react to changing process
behaviour , and have lag in responding to large
disturbances.

Method Advantages Disadvantages III.3 Multi-resolution PID Controller

Manual No Math Requires
Tuning required experienced A generalization of PID controller, based on
Online personnel multi-resolution decomposition of error by using small
method waves popularly known as wavelets. The basic idea is that
Ziegler Proven Process upset, if e is decomposed as
- Method Some trial and e=∑ e i
Nichols error,
Online Aggressive Then a generalized PID controller can be formulated as
method tunning
Software Consistent Some cost u= ∑ K i e i
Tools tuning training
Online or involved Where K i are controller parameters to be determined.
offline
method. In general, a pid controller takes as its input the
May include error e and then acts on the error to generate the control
valve output u as shown in equation (1.6). Gains K P , K I , K D are
analysis the proportion derivative gains used by the system to act
sensor and on the error, respectively. In terms of frequency
allow information, the proportional and integral terms tends to
simulation capture the low-frequency information of the error signal
before and derivative captures the high-frequency information of
downloading the error signal [1]. In a similar manner, an MRPID
Cohen- Good process Offline method decomposes the error signal into its high, low and
Coon models Only good for intermediate scale components, as shown here:
first-order
processes f (x) = f H (x)+f M1 (x)+….+f M((N-1) (x)+f L (x) (1.7)

III.2 Limitations of PID control
While PID controllers are applicable to many
control problems, and often perform satisfactorily without
any improvements or even tuning, they can perform
poorly in some applications, and do not in general provide
optimal control. The fundamental difficulty with PID
control is that it is a feedback system, with constant
parameters, and no direct knowledge of the process, and
thus overall performance is reactive and a compromise –
while PID control is the best controller with no model of
the process, better performance can be obtained by
incorporating a model of the process.
The most significant improvement is
to incorporate feed-forward control with knowledge about
the system, and using the PID only to control error.
Alternatively, PIDs can be modified in more minor ways,
such as by changing the parameters, improving
measurement (higher sampling rate, precision, and
accuracy, and low-pass filtering if necessary), or
cascading multiple PID controllers.
Each of these components are scaled by their
respective gains and then added together to generate the
control signal u or Applying wavelet decomposition to the
error signal, as well as the cumulative effect of many
underlying phenomenon such as measurement noise and
effects of external disturbances, which manifest on
different scales.
Then each one of these components is scaled by
its respective gain and then added together to generate the
control signal (u).
u =K H e H + K M1 e M1 + . . . +K MN-1 +K L e L (1.8)
Unlike a PID controller, which has three tuning
parameters (Kp, K i , K d ), an MRPID can have two or
more parameters based on the no. of decomposition levels
performed on the error signal.

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 Volume 2 Special Issue
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.
http://www.cisjournal.org
For example, one-level decomposition yields a
low and a high-frequency component. So a controller with
one-level decomposition has two gains. In order to achieve
higher resolution, a two-level decomposition is done on
the error signal, three signal components of e are
generated. Each one of these components can be scaled by
gain and added to generate the control signal [2][3]. A
schematic diagram of a plant using MRPID is shown in
above figure.
All physical systems are subjected to some type
of extraneous signals or noise during operation. Therefore,
in the design of a control system, consideration has to be
made that the system provides greater insensitivity to
noise and disturbance. The effect of feedback on noise and
disturbance greatly depends on where these extraneous
signals occur in the system. In practice, disturbance and
commands are often low-frequency signals, whereas
sensor noises are often high-frequency signals. This makes
it difficult to minimize the effect of these uncertainties
simultaneously. It is under these conditions that an
MRPID performs extremely well.
IV. CONCLUSION
The wavelet decomposition provides much
higher resolution than the traditional PID in describing the
history and predicting the immediate future of the error.
The wavelet decomposition, which represents the error
signal at different scales, provides higher resolution
representation of the error signals than the one used in
existing PID and is the basis of the new controller design.
More research efforts are underway by simulation to fully
explore the potential of this new concept.
ISSN 2079-8407
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