Energy-aware MPC co-design for DC-DC converters

In this paper, we propose an integrated controller design methodology for the implementation of an energy-aware explicit model predictive control (MPC) algorithms, illustrating the method on a DC-DC converter model. The power consumption of control algorithms is becoming increasingly important for low-power embedded systems, especially where complex digital control techniques, like MPC, are used. For DC-DC converters, digital control provides better regulation, but also higher energy consumption compared to standard analog methods. To overcome the limitation in energy efficiency, instead of addressing the problem by implementing sub-optimal MPC schemes, the closed-loop performance and the control algorithm power consumption are minimized in a joint cost function, allowing us to keep the controller power efficiency closer to an analog approach while maintaining closed-loop optimality. A case study for an implementation in reconfigurable hardware shows how a designer can optimally trade closed-loop performance with hardware implementation performance.