FEED-FORWARD AUTOMATIC CONTROL SYSTEM

Feed-forward is a term describing a kind of system which reacts to changes in its environment, usually to maintain some desired state of the system. A system which exhibits feed-forward behaviour responds to a measured disturbance in a pre-defined way - in contrast with a feedback system. This is a control technique that can be measured but not controlled. The disturbance is measured and fed forward to an earlier part of the control loop so that corrective action can be initiated in advance of the disturbance having an adverse effect on the system response [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_feed-forward_control]. Feed-forward control is a strategy used to compensate for disturbances in a system before they affect the controlled variable. A feed-forward control system measures a disturbance variable, predicts its effect on the process, and applies corrective action. Without the feed-forward controller the manipulated variable has a value which is related to the uncontrolled variable to produce the desired value of the controlled variable. In addition-to this there is a disturbance variable which is either a part of the uncontrolled variable or from some other source that enters the system, as shown in Figure 1 below.

The effect of this disturbance on the controlled variable is measured or calculated. The effect the manipulated variable has on the controlled variable must also be measured or calculated. These measurements and/or calculations must include steady state effects as well as dynamic effects (time related) and non-linearities. Feed-forward controller (Figure 1) will receive the disturbance variable as an input and must provide an output that result in an equal and opposite effect so as to maintain the controlled variable at a constant value. The output of feed-forward controller includes a bias component required to match the uncontrolled variable as well as a "fudge factor" component that changes in response to the disturbance variable. The "fudge factor" must be the right amount and at the right time.

Given an exact model of the process, the feed-forward controller will adjust the manipulated variable so that the controlled variable is unaffected by the disturbance. In fact, the controlled variable has no influence over the control; corrective action is totally in response to the disturbance. Each disturbance must be treated in the same way if the controlled variable is to be held constant. Feed-forward controller may accommodate more than one input. Feed-forward con roller may be a simple relay device having a 4-20-mA input from the disturbance variable transmitter and providing a 4-20mA output for operating a valve in the manipulated variable line. It would be unusual to find that the input and output relationship for feed-forward controller had to be one to one and linear to compensate for the disturbance. A gain and bias adjustment is always required to match the manipulated variable to the uncontrolled and disturbance variables. Additionally, it may require lead-lag elements, linearizers, non-linearizers, and a summer. However, this system has three major drawbacks: The model must be exact (including dynamics and nonlinearities). All instruments in the loop must be perfectly calibrated. Disturbances other than the feed-forward variable are not controlled. Thus, feed-forward by itself is insufficient control. However, combined with conventional feedback, it can be a powerful control tool. If a load change in a process occurs so frequently that the controller cannot keep up, or if disturbance is so large that the controlled variable cannot be held within tolerable limits, and if the disturbance variable itself cannot be controlled, consider adding feed-forward control to the system.
[http://www.sapiensman.com/control/index.htm#FEEDFORWARD%20CONTROL].

In the journal of Feed-Forward Automatic Control System from the Proceedings of the Second Asian Particle Accelerator Conference, Beijing, China, 2001, discussed about the development of the feed-forward automatic control system based on a novel control principle in order to compensate the amplitude and phase fluctuations of the microwave field in the thermionic RF gun cavity. Through this method, the changes caused by beam loading can be efficiently avoided. Feed-forward control method is based on good reproducibility of system output. It adjusts RF amplitude and phase in a latter macro-pulse to expected value, according to the information from former one.

The control system includes four parts, data collector, data processing, signal generator and executing component. A digital oscilloscope is used to receive amplitude and phase signal through detector and DBM separately, and the signal is divided into a set of sample points by a certain interval. Next, the data of expected value; secondly, every sample data will contrast the expected value to find the difference; finally, the control data is to be built according to the difference, and then is transferred to AFG to generate the analog signals. As a result, the analog signal will modulate the input microwave before it goes into RF gun cavity, through executing components, attenuator and phase-shifter. The operation is repeated until the RF amplitude and phase in the RF gun cavity is uniform enough during a macro-pulse. Certainly, the whole process is operated automatically under the control of computer. The stability and the reliability of the system can be seen in the experimental result from the graph illustrations. Large numbers of experiments show that the control system can apply extensively to the relevant accelerator field.