Fundamentals of Linear Control A Concise Approach

The book you have in your hands grew out of a set of lecture notes scribbled down for MAE 143B, the senior-level undergraduate Linear Control class offered by the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

The focus of the book is on classical methods for analysis and design of feedback systems that take advantage of the powerful and insightful representation of dynamic linear systems in the frequency domain. The required mathematics is introduced or revisited as needed. In this way the text is made mostly self-contained, with accessory work shifted occasionally to homework problems.

Key concepts such as tracking, disturbance rejection, stability, and robustness are introduced early on and revisited throughout the text as the mathematical tools become more sophisticated. Examples illustrate graphical design methods based on the rootlocus, Bode, and Nyquist diagrams. Whenever possible, without straying too much from the classical narrative, the reader is made aware of contemporary tools and techniques such as state-space methods, robust control, and nonlinear systems theory.

With so much to cover in the way of insightful engineering and relevant mathematics, I tried to steer clear of the curse of the engineering systems and control textbook: becoming a treatise with 1000 pages. The depth of the content exposed in fewer than 300 pages is the result of a compromise between my utopian goal of at most 100 pages on the one hand and the usefulness of the work as a reference and, I hope, inspirational textbook on the other. Let me know if you think I failed to deliver on this promise.

I shall be forever indebted to the many students, teaching assistants, and colleagues whose exposure to earlier versions of this work helped shape what I am finally not afraid of calling the first edition. Special thanks are due to Professor Reinaldo Palhares, who diligently read the original text and delighted me with an abundance of helpful comments.

I would like to thank Sara Torenson from the UCSD Bookstore, who patiently worked with me to make sure earlier versions were available as readers for UCSD students, and Steven Elliot from Cambridge University Press for his support in getting this work to a larger audience.