Offtake feedforward compensator design for an irrigation channel with distributed control

In the control of irrigation channels, there exists a tradeoff between the local performance of regulating the water-level in each pool to a given setpoint and rejecting offtake disturbances, on the one hand, and decoupling between pools, on the other. Such a tradeoff is well managed by a distributed control that inherits the interconnection structure of the plant. Furthermore, to decrease the water-level deviation from its setpoint in response to large offtakes, i.e. to improve the transient response of the local closed-loop system, the knowledge of the offtakes can be fed forward. This paper explores the designing of a feedforward compensator to improve local control performance while maintaining the good management of closed-loop coupling between pools by distributed control.