Output feedback control under randomly varying distributed delays

An output feedback control law has been formulated in a stochastic setting, based on the principles of minimum variance filtering and dynamic programming, for application to processes thatare subjected to randomly varying distributed delays. The proposed estimation and control law for delay compensationis built on the concept of the conventional linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG), called delay compensatedlinear quadratic Gaussian (DCLQG). Although the certainty equivalence propertyof LQG does not holdfor DCLQG in general, the combined state estimation and state feedback approach of DCLQG offers asuboptimal solution to the control problem under randomly varying distributed delays. DCLQG is potentiallyapplicable to analysis and synthesis of control systems for vehicle management of future generationaircraft where a computer network is employed for distributed processing and on-line information exchange between diverse control and decision-making functions. Resultsof simulation experiments are presented to demonstrate efficacy of the proposed DCLQG algorithm for flight control of an advanced aircraft.