Control Systems/Nyquist Stability Criteria

Nyquist Stability Criteria
The Nyquist Stability Criteria is a test for system stability, just like the Routh-Hurwitz test, or the Root-Locus Methodology. However, the Nyquist Criteria can also give us additional information about a system. Routh-Hurwitz and Root-Locus can tell us where the poles of the system are for particular values of gain. By altering the gain of the system, we can determine if any of the poles move into the RHP, and therefore become unstable. The Nyquist Criteria, however, can tell us things about the frequency characteristics of the system. For instance, some systems with constant gain might be stable for low-frequency inputs, but become unstable for high-frequency inputs.

Also, the Nyquist Criteria can tell us things about the phase of the input signals, the time-shift of the system, and other important information.

Contours
A contour is a complicated mathematical construct, but luckily we only need to worry ourselves with a few points about them. We will denote contours with the Greek letter &Gamma; (gamma). Contours are lines, drawn on a graph, that follow certain rules:


 * 1) The contour must close (it must form a complete loop)
 * 2) The contour may not cross directly through a pole of the system.
 * 3) Contours must have a direction (clockwise or counterclockwise, generally).
 * 4) A contour is called "simple" if it has no self-intersections. We only consider simple contours here.

Once we have such a contour, we can develop some important theorems about them, and finally use these theorems to derive the Nyquist stability criterion.

Argument Principle
Here is the argument principle, which we will use to derive the stability criterion. Do not worry if you do not understand all the terminology, we will walk through it:

When we have our contour, &Gamma;, we transform it into $$\Gamma_{F(s)}$$ by plugging every point of the contour into the function F(s), and taking the resultant value to be a point on the transformed contour.

The Nyquist Contour
The Nyquist contour, the contour that makes the entire nyquist criterion work, must encircle the entire unstable region of the complex plane. For analog systems, this is the right half of the complex s plane. For digital systems, this is the entire plane outside the unit circle. Remember that if a pole to the closed-loop transfer function (or equivalently a zero of the characteristic equation) lies in the unstable region of the complex plane, the system is an unstable system.


 * Analog Systems:The Nyquist contour for analog systems is an infinite semi-circle that encircles the entire right-half of the s plane. The semicircle travels up the imaginary axis from negative infinity to positive infinity. From positive infinity, the contour breaks away from the imaginary axis, in the clock-wise direction, and forms a giant semicircle.
 * Digital Systems:The Nyquist contour in digital systems is a counter-clockwise encirclement of the unit circle.

Nyquist Criteria
Let us first introduce the most important equation when dealing with the Nyquist criterion:


 * $$N = Z - P$$

Where:


 * N is the number of encirclements of the (-1, 0) point.
 * Z is the number of zeros of the characteristic equation.
 * P is the number of poles in the of the open-loop characteristic equation.

With this equation stated, we can now state the Nyquist Stability Criterion:

In other words, if P is zero then N must equal zero. Otherwise, N must equal P. Essentially, we are saying that Z must always equal zero, because Z is the number of zeros of the characteristic equation (and therefore the number of poles of the closed-loop transfer function) that are in the right-half of the s plane.

Keep in mind that we don't necessarily know the locations of all the zeros of the characteristic equation. So if we find, using the nyquist criterion, that the number of poles is not equal to N, then we know that there must be a zero in the right-half plane, and that therefore the system is unstable.

Nyquist &harr; Bode
A careful inspection of the Nyquist plot will reveal a surprising relationship to the Bode plots of the system. If we use the Bode phase plot as the angle &theta;, and the Bode magnitude plot as the distance r, then it becomes apparent that the Nyquist plot of a system is simply the polar representation of the Bode plots.

To obtain the Nyquist plot from the Bode plots, we take the phase angle and the magnitude value at each frequency &omega;. We convert the magnitude value from decibels back into gain ratios. Then, we plot the ordered pairs (r, &theta;) on a polar graph.

Nyquist in the Z Domain
The Nyquist Criteria can be utilized in the digital domain in a similar manner as it is used with analog systems. The primary difference in using the criteria is that the shape of the Nyquist contour must change to encompass the unstable region of the Z plane. Therefore, instead of an infinitesimal semi-circle, the Nyquist contour for digital systems is a counter-clockwise unit circle. By changing the shape of the contour, the same N = Z - P equation holds true, and the resulting Nyquist graph will typically look identical to one from an analog system, and can be interpreted in the same way.