Stability analysis of sampled-data fuzzy controller for nonlinear systems based on switching T–S fuzzy model

This paper investigates the system stability of a sampled-data fuzzy-model-based control system, formed by a nonlinear plant and a sampled-data fuzzy controller connected in a closed loop. The sampled-data fuzzy controller has an advantage that it can be implemented using a microcontroller or a digital computer to lower the implementation cost and time. However, discontinuity introduced by the sampling activity complicates the system dynamics and makes the stability analysis difficult compared with the pure continuous-time fuzzy control systems. Moreover, the favourable property of the continuous-time fuzzy control systems which is able to relax the stability analysis result vanishes in the sampled-data fuzzy control systems. A Lyapunov-based approach is employed to derive the LMI-based stability conditions to guarantee the system stability. To facilitate the stability analysis, a switching fuzzy model consisting of some local fuzzy models is employed to represent the nonlinear plant to be controlled. The comparatively less strong nonlinearity of each local fuzzy model eases the satisfaction of the stability conditions. Furthermore, membership functions of both fuzzy model and sampled-data fuzzy controller are considered to alleviate the conservativeness of the stability analysis result. A simulation example is given to illustrate the merits of the proposed approach.