PID controller

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A block diagram of a PID controller
A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop feedback
mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems – a PID is the most commonly used
feedback controller. A PID controller calculates an "error" value as the difference between a measured
process variable and a desired setpoint. The controller attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the
process control inputs.
The PID controller calculation (algorithm) involves three separate parameters, and is accordingly
sometimes called three-term control: the proportional, the integral and derivative values, denoted P, I,
and D. Heuristically, these values can be interpreted in terms of time: P depends on the present error, I
on the accumulation of past errors, and D is a prediction of future errors, based on current rate of
change.[1] The weighted sum of these three actions is used to adjust the process via a control element
such as the position of a control valve or the power supply of a heating element.
In the absence of knowledge of the underlying process, a PID controller is the best controller.[2] By
tuning the three constants in the PID controller algorithm, the controller can provide control action
designed for specific process requirements. The response of the controller can be described in terms of
the responsiveness of the controller to an error, the degree to which the controller overshoots the
setpoint and the degree of system oscillation. Note that the use of the PID algorithm for control does
not guarantee optimal control of the system or system stability.
Some applications may require using only one or two modes to provide the appropriate system control.
This is achieved by setting the gain of undesired control outputs to zero. A PID controller will be called
a PI, PD, P or I controller in the absence of the respective control actions. PI controllers are fairly
common, since derivative action is sensitive to measurement noise, whereas the absence of an integral
value may prevent the system from reaching its target value due to the control action.
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[edit] Control loop basics
Further information: Control loop
A familiar example of a control loop is the action taken when adjusting hot and cold faucet valves to
maintain the faucet water at the desired temperature. This typically involves the mixing of two process
streams, the hot and cold water. The person touches the water to sense or measure its temperature.
Based on this feedback they perform a control action to adjust the hot and cold water valves until the
process temperature stabilizes at the desired value.
Sensing water temperature is analogous to taking a measurement of the process value or process
variable (PV). The desired temperature is called the setpoint (SP). The input to the process (the water
valve position) is called the manipulated variable (MV). The difference between the temperature
measurement and the setpoint is the error (e) and quantifies whether the water is too hot or too cold and
by how much.
After measuring the temperature (PV), and then calculating the error, the controller decides when to
change the tap position (MV) and by how much. When the controller first turns the valve on, it may
turn the hot valve only slightly if warm water is desired, or it may open the valve all the way if very hot
water is desired. This is an example of a simple proportional control. In the event that hot water does
not arrive quickly, the controller may try to speed-up the process by opening up the hot water valve
more-and-more as time goes by. This is an example of an integral control.
Making a change that is too large when the error is small is equivalent to a high gain controller and will
lead to overshoot. If the controller were to repeatedly make changes that were too large and repeatedly
overshoot the target, the output would oscillate around the setpoint in either a constant, growing, or
decaying sinusoid. If the oscillations increase with time then the system is unstable, whereas if they
decrease the system is stable. If the oscillations remain at a constant magnitude the system is
marginally stable.
In the interest of achieving a gradual convergence at the desired temperature (SP), the controller may
wish to damp the anticipated future oscillations. So in order to compensate for this effect, the controller
may elect to temper their adjustments. This can be thought of as a derivative control method.
If a controller starts from a stable state at zero error (PV = SP), then further changes by the controller
will be in response to changes in other measured or unmeasured inputs to the process that impact on the
process, and hence on the PV. Variables that impact on the process other than the MV are known as
disturbances. Generally controllers are used to reject disturbances and/or implement setpoint changes.
Changes in feedwater temperature constitute a disturbance to the faucet temperature control process.
In theory, a controller can be used to control any process which has a measurable output (PV), a known
ideal value for that output (SP) and an input to the process (MV) that will affect the relevant PV.
Controllers are used in industry to regulate temperature, pressure, flow rate, chemical composition,
speed and practically every other variable for which a measurement exists.

[edit] PID controller theory

This section describes the parallel or non-interacting form of the PID controller. For other forms please
see the section "Alternative nomenclature and PID forms".
The PID control scheme is named after its three correcting terms, whose sum constitutes the
manipulated variable (MV). Hence:
where
 Pout, Iout, and Dout are the contributions to the output from the PID controller from each of the
three terms, as defined below.

[edit] Proportional term

Plot of PV vs time, for three values of Kp (Ki and Kd held constant)
The proportional term (sometimes called gain) makes a change to the output that is proportional to the
current error value. The proportional response can be adjusted by multiplying the error by a constant
Kp, called the proportional gain.
The proportional term is given by:
where
Pout: Proportional term of output
Kp: Proportional gain, a tuning parameter
SP: Setpoint, the desired value
PV: Process value (or process variable), the measured value
e: Error = SP − PV
t: Time or instantaneous time (the present)

A high proportional gain results in a large change in the output for a given change in the error. If the
proportional gain is too high, the system can become unstable (see the section on loop tuning). In
contrast, a small gain results in a small output response to a large input error, and a less responsive (or
sensitive) controller. If the proportional gain is too low, the control action may be too small when
responding to system disturbances.

[edit] Droop
A pure proportional controller will not always settle at its target value, but may retain a steady-state
error. Specifically, the process gain - drift in the absence of control, such as cooling of a furnace
towards room temperature, biases a pure proportional controller. If the process gain is down, as in
cooling, then the bias will be below the set point, hence the term "droop".
Droop is proportional to process gain and inversely proportional to proportional gain. Specifically the
steady-state error is given by:
e = G / Kp

Droop is an inherent defect of purely proportional control. Droop may be mitigated by adding a
compensating bias term (setting the setpoint above the true desired value), or corrected by adding an
integration term (in a PI or PID controller), which effectively computes a bias adaptively.
Despite droop, both tuning theory and industrial practice indicate that it is the proportional term that
should contribute the bulk of the output change.

[edit] Integral term

Plot of PV vs time, for three values of Ki (Kp and Kd held constant)
The contribution from the integral term (sometimes called reset) is proportional to both the magnitude
of the error and the duration of the error. Summing the instantaneous error over time (integrating the
error) gives the accumulated offset that should have been corrected previously. The accumulated error
is then multiplied by the integral gain and added to the controller output. The magnitude of the
contribution of the integral term to the overall control action is determined by the integral gain, Ki.
The integral term is given by:
where
Iout: Integral term of output
Ki: Integral gain, a tuning parameter
SP: Setpoint, the desired value
PV: Process value (or process variable), the measured value
e: Error = SP − PV
t: Time or instantaneous time (the present)
τ: a dummy integration variable

The integral term (when added to the proportional term) accelerates the movement of the process
towards setpoint and eliminates the residual steady-state error that occurs with a proportional only
controller. However, since the integral term is responding to accumulated errors from the past, it can
cause the present value to overshoot the setpoint value (cross over the setpoint and then create a
deviation in the other direction). For further notes regarding integral gain tuning and controller stability,
see the section on loop tuning.

[edit] Derivative term

Plot of PV vs time, for three values of Kd (Kp and Ki held constant)
The rate of change of the process error is calculated by determining the slope of the error over time
(i.e., its first derivative with respect to time) and multiplying this rate of change by the derivative gain
Kd. The magnitude of the contribution of the derivative term (sometimes called rate) to the overall
control action is termed the derivative gain, Kd.
The derivative term is given by:
where
Dout: Derivative term of output
Kd: Derivative gain, a tuning parameter
SP: Setpoint, the desired value
PV: Process value (or process variable), the measured value
e: Error = SP − PV
t: Time or instantaneous time (the present)

The derivative term slows the rate of change of the controller output and this effect is most noticeable
close to the controller setpoint. Hence, derivative control is used to reduce the magnitude of the
overshoot produced by the integral component and improve the combined controller-process stability.
However, differentiation of a signal amplifies noise and thus this term in the controller is highly
sensitive to noise in the error term, and can cause a process to become unstable if the noise and the
derivative gain are sufficiently large. Hence an approximation to a differentiator with a limited
bandwidth is more commonly used. Such a circuit is known as a Phase-Lead compensator.

[edit] Summary
The proportional, integral, and derivative terms are summed to calculate the output of the PID
controller. Defining u(t) as the controller output, the final form of the PID algorithm is:
where the tuning parameters are:
Proportional gain, Kp
Larger values typically mean faster response since the larger the error, the larger the proportional
term compensation. An excessively large proportional gain will lead to process instability and
oscillation.
Integral gain, Ki
Larger values imply steady state errors are eliminated more quickly. The trade-off is larger
overshoot: any negative error integrated during transient response must be integrated away by
positive error before reaching steady state.
Derivative gain, Kd
Larger values decrease overshoot, but slow down transient response and may lead to instability
due to signal noise amplification in the differentiation of the error.

[edit] Loop tuning

Tuning a control loop is the adjustment of its control parameters (gain/proportional band, integral
gain/reset, derivative gain/rate) to the optimum values for the desired control response. Stability
(bounded oscillation) is a basic requirement, but beyond that, different systems have different behavior,
different applications have different requirements, and requirements may conflict with one another.
Some processes have a degree of non-linearity and so parameters that work well at full-load conditions
don't work when the process is starting up from no-load; this can be corrected by gain scheduling
(using different parameters in different operating regions). PID controllers often provide acceptable
control using default tunings, but performance can generally be improved by careful tuning, and
performance may be unacceptable with poor tuning.
PID tuning is a difficult problem, even though there are only three parameters and in principle is simple
to describe, because it must satisfy complex criteria within the limitations of PID control. There are
accordingly various methods for loop tuning, and more sophisticated techniques are the subject of
patents; this section describes some traditional manual methods for loop tuning.

[edit] Stability
If the PID controller parameters (the gains of the proportional, integral and derivative terms) are chosen
incorrectly, the controlled process input can be unstable, i.e. its output diverges, with or without
oscillation, and is limited only by saturation or mechanical breakage. Instability is caused by excess
gain, particularly in the presence of significant lag.
Generally, stability of response (the reverse of instability) is required and the process must not oscillate
for any combination of process conditions and setpoints, though sometimes marginal stability (bounded
oscillation) is acceptable or desired.
[edit] Optimum behavior
The optimum behavior on a process change or setpoint change varies depending on the application.
Two basic requirements are regulation (disturbance rejection – staying at a given setpoint) and
command tracking (implementing setpoint changes) – these refer to how well the controlled variable
tracks the desired value. Specific criteria for command tracking include rise time and settling time.
Some processes must not allow an overshoot of the process variable beyond the setpoint if, for
example, this would be unsafe. Other processes must minimize the energy expended in reaching a new
setpoint.

[edit] Overview of methods

There are several methods for tuning a PID loop. The most effective methods generally involve the
development of some form of process model, then choosing P, I, and D based on the dynamic model
parameters. Manual tuning methods can be relatively inefficient, particularly if the loops have response
times on the order of minutes or longer.
The choice of method will depend largely on whether or not the loop can be taken "offline" for tuning,
and the response time of the system. If the system can be taken offline, the best tuning method often
involves subjecting the system to a step change in input, measuring the output as a function of time,
and using this response to determine the control parameters.
Choosing a Tuning Method
Method Advantages Disadvantages
Manual Requires experienced
No math required. Online method.
Tuning personnel.
Ziegler– Process upset, some trial-and-
Proven Method. Online method.
Nichols error, very aggressive tuning.
Consistent tuning. Online or offline method. May
Software include valve and sensor analysis. Allow simulation Some cost and training
Tools before downloading. Can support Non-Steady State involved.
(NSS) Tuning.
Some math. Offline method.
Cohen-Coon Good process models. Only good for first-order
processes.

[edit] Manual tuning

If the system must remain online, one tuning method is to first set Ki and Kd values to zero. Increase
the Kp until the output of the loop oscillates, then the Kp should be set to approximately half of that
value for a "quarter amplitude decay" type response. Then increase Ki until any offset is correct in
sufficient time for the process. However, too much Ki will cause instability. Finally, increase Kd, if
required, until the loop is acceptably quick to reach its reference after a load disturbance. However, too
much Kd will cause excessive response and overshoot. A fast PID loop tuning usually overshoots
slightly to reach the setpoint more quickly; however, some systems cannot accept overshoot, in which
case an over-damped closed-loop system is required, which will require a Kp setting significantly less
than half that of the Kp setting causing oscillation.
 Effects of increasing a parameter independently
Parameter Rise time Overshoot Settling time Steady-state error Stability[3]
Kp Decrease Increase Small change Decrease Degrade
Ki Decrease
Decrease[4] Increase Increase Degrade
significantly
Minor Improve if Kd
Kd Minor decrease Minor decrease No effect in theory
decrease small

[edit] Ziegler–Nichols method

For more details on this topic, see Ziegler–Nichols method.
Another heuristic tuning method is formally known as the Ziegler–Nichols method, introduced by John
G. Ziegler and Nathaniel B. Nichols in the 1940s. As in the method above, the Ki and Kd gains are first
set to zero. The P gain is increased until it reaches the ultimate gain, Ku, at which the output of the loop
starts to oscillate. Ku and the oscillation period Pu are used to set the gains as shown:
Ziegler–Nichols method
Control Type Kp Ki Kd
P 0.50Ku - -
PI 0.45Ku 1.2Kp / Pu -
PID 0.60Ku 2Kp / Pu KpPu / 8

[edit] PID tuning software

Most modern industrial facilities no longer tune loops using the manual calculation methods shown
above. Instead, PID tuning and loop optimization software are used to ensure consistent results. These
software packages will gather the data, develop process models, and suggest optimal tuning. Some
software packages can even develop tuning by gathering data from reference changes.
Mathematical PID loop tuning induces an impulse in the system, and then uses the controlled system's
frequency response to design the PID loop values. In loops with response times of several minutes,
mathematical loop tuning is recommended, because trial and error can literally take days just to find a
stable set of loop values. Optimal values are harder to find. Some digital loop controllers offer a self-
tuning feature in which very small setpoint changes are sent to the process, allowing the controller
itself to calculate optimal tuning values.
Other formulas are available to tune the loop according to different performance criteria. Many
patented formulas are now embedded within PID tuning software and hardware modules.
Advances in automated PID Loop Tuning software also deliver algorithms for tuning PID Loops in a
dynamic or Non-Steady State (NSS) scenario. The software will model the dynamics of a process,
through a disturbance, and calculate PID control parameters in response.

[edit] Modifications to the PID algorithm

The basic PID algorithm presents some challenges in control applications that have been addressed by
minor modifications to the PID form.
Integral windup

For more details on this topic, see Integral windup.

One common problem resulting from the ideal PID implementations is integral windup, where a large
change in setpoint occurs (say a positive change) and the integral term accumulates a significant error
during the rise (windup), thus overshooting and continuing to increase as this accumulated error is
unwound. This problem can be addressed by:
• Initializing the controller integral to a desired value
• Increasing the setpoint in a suitable ramp
• Disabling the integral function until the PV has entered the controllable region
• Limiting the time period over which the integral error is calculated
• Preventing the integral term from accumulating above or below pre-determined bounds
Freezing the integral function in case of disturbances
If a PID loop is used to control the temperature of an electric resistance furnace, the system has
stabilized and then the door is opened and something cold is put into the furnace the temperature
drops below the setpoint. The integral function of the controller tends to compensate this error by
introducing another error in the positive direction. This can be avoided by freezing of the integral
function after the opening of the door for the time the control loop typically needs to reheat the
furnace.

Replacing the integral function by a model based part

Often the time-response of the system is approximately known. Then it is an advantage to
simulate this time-response with a model and to calculate some unknown parameter from the
actual response of the system. If for instance the system is an electrical furnace the response of
the difference between furnace temperature and ambient temperature to changes of the electrical
power will be similar to that of a simple RC low-pass filter multiplied by an unknown
proportional coefficient. The actual electrical power supplied to the furnace is delayed by a low-
pass filter to simulate the response of the temperature of the furnace and then the actual
temperature minus the ambient temperature is divided by this low-pass filtered electrical power.
Then, the result is stabilized by another low-pass filter leading to an estimation of the
proportional coefficient. With this estimation, it is possible to calculate the required electrical
power by dividing the set-point of the temperature minus the ambient temperature by this
coefficient. The result can then be used instead of the integral function. This also achieves a
control error of zero in the steady-state, but avoids integral windup and can give a significantly
improved control action compared to an optimized PID controller. This type of controller does
work properly in an open loop situation which causes integral windup with an integral function.
This is an advantage if, for example, the heating of a furnace has to be reduced for some time
because of the failure of a heating element, or if the controller is used as an advisory system to a
human operator who may not switch it to closed-loop operation. It may also be useful if the
controller is inside a branch of a complex control system that may be temporarily inactive.

Many PID loops control a mechanical device (for example, a valve). Mechanical maintenance can be a
major cost and wear leads to control degradation in the form of either stiction or a deadband in the
mechanical response to an input signal. The rate of mechanical wear is mainly a function of how often
a device is activated to make a change. Where wear is a significant concern, the PID loop may have an
output deadband to reduce the frequency of activation of the output (valve). This is accomplished by
modifying the controller to hold its output steady if the change would be small (within the defined
deadband range). The calculated output must leave the deadband before the actual output will change.
The proportional and derivative terms can produce excessive movement in the output when a system is
subjected to an instantaneous step increase in the error, such as a large setpoint change. In the case of
the derivative term, this is due to taking the derivative of the error, which is very large in the case of an
instantaneous step change. As a result, some PID algorithms incorporate the following modifications:
Derivative of output
In this case the PID controller measures the derivative of the output quantity, rather than the
derivative of the error. The output is always continuous (i.e., never has a step change). For this to
be effective, the derivative of the output must have the same sign as the derivative of the error.
Setpoint ramping
In this modification, the setpoint is gradually moved from its old value to a newly specified value
using a linear or first order differential ramp function. This avoids the discontinuity present in a
simple step change.
Setpoint weighting
Setpoint weighting uses different multipliers for the error depending on which element of the
controller it is used in. The error in the integral term must be the true control error to avoid
steady-state control errors. This affects the controller's setpoint response. These parameters do not
affect the response to load disturbances and measurement noise.

[edit] History
This section requires expansion.

PID theory developed by observing the action of helmsmen.

PID controllers date to 1890s governor design.[2][5] PID controllers were subsequently developed in
automatic ship steering. One of the earliest examples of a PID-type controller was developed by Elmer
Sperry in 1911,[6] while the first published theoretical analysis of a PID controller was by Russian
American engineer Nicolas Minorsky, in (Minorsky 1922). Minorsky was designing automatic steering
systems for the US Navy, and based his analysis on observations of a helmsman, observing that the
helmsman controlled the ship not only based on the current error, but also on past error and current rate
of change;[7] this was then made mathematical by Minorsky. The Navy ultimately did not adopt the
system, due to resistance by personnel[why?]. Similar work was carried out and published by several
others in the 1930s.
Initially controllers were pneumatic, hydraulic, or mechanical, with electrical systems later developing,
with wholly electrical systems developed following World War II.
[edit] Minorsky's work

Minorsky developed the PID on the USS New Mexico.

In detail, Minorsky's work proceeded as follows.[8] His goal was stability, not general control, which
significantly simplified the problem. While proportional control provides stability against small
disturbances, it was insufficient for dealing with a steady disturbance, notably a stiff gale (due to
droop), which required adding the integral term. Finally, the derivative term was added to improve
control. Trials were carried out on the USS New Mexico, with the controller controlling the angular
velocity (not angle) of the rudder. PI control yielded sustained yaw (angular error) of ±2°, while adding
D yielded yaw of ±1/6°, better than most helmsmen could achieve.

[edit] Limitations of PID control

While PID controllers are applicable to many control problems, and often perform satisfactorily
without any improvements or even tuning, they can perform poorly in some applications, and do not in
general provide optimal control. The fundamental difficulty with PID control is that it is a feedback
system, with constant parameters, and no direct knowledge of the process, and thus overall
performance is reactive and a compromise – while PID control is the best controller with no model of
the process,[2] better performance can be obtained by incorporating a model of the process.
The most significant improvement is to incorporate feed-forward control with knowledge about the
system, and using the PID only to control error. Alternatively, PIDs can be modified in more minor
ways, such as by changing the parameters (either gain scheduling in different use cases or adaptively
modifying them based on performance), improving measurement (higher sampling rate, precision, and
accuracy, and low-pass filtering if necessary), or cascading multiple PID controllers.
PID controllers, when used alone, can give poor performance when the PID loop gains must be reduced
so that the control system does not overshoot, oscillate or hunt about the control setpoint value. They
also have difficulties in the presence of non-linearities, may trade off regulation versus response time,
do not react to changing process behavior (say, the process changes after it has warmed up), and have
lag in responding to large disturbances.

[edit] Linearity
Another problem faced with PID controllers is that they are linear, and in particular symmetric. Thus,
performance of PID controllers in non-linear systems (such as HVAC systems) is variable. For
example, in temperature control, a common use case is active heating (via a heating element) but
passive cooling (heating off, but no cooling), so overshoot can only be corrected slowly – it cannot be
forced downward. In this case the PID should be tuned to be overdamped, to prevent or reduce
overshoot, though this reduces performance (it increases settling time).
[edit] Noise in derivative
A problem with the derivative term is that small amounts of measurement or process noise can cause
large amounts of change in the output. It is often helpful to filter the measurements with a low-pass
filter in order to remove higher-frequency noise components. However, low-pass filtering and
derivative control can cancel each other out, so reducing noise by instrumentation means is a much
better choice. Alternatively, a nonlinear median filter may be used, which improves the filtering
efficiency and practical performance [9]. In some case, the differential band can be turned off in many
systems with little loss of control. This is equivalent to using the PID controller as a PI controller.

[edit] Improvements
[edit] Feed-forward
The control system performance can be improved by combining the feedback (or closed-loop) control
of a PID controller with feed-forward (or open-loop) control. Knowledge about the system (such as the
desired acceleration and inertia) can be fed forward and combined with the PID output to improve the
overall system performance. The feed-forward value alone can often provide the major portion of the
controller output. The PID controller can be used primarily to respond to whatever difference or error
remains between the setpoint (SP) and the actual value of the process variable (PV). Since the feed-
forward output is not affected by the process feedback, it can never cause the control system to
oscillate, thus improving the system response and stability.
For example, in most motion control systems, in order to accelerate a mechanical load under control,
more force or torque is required from the prime mover, motor, or actuator. If a velocity loop PID
controller is being used to control the speed of the load and command the force or torque being applied
by the prime mover, then it is beneficial to take the instantaneous acceleration desired for the load,
scale that value appropriately and add it to the output of the PID velocity loop controller. This means
that whenever the load is being accelerated or decelerated, a proportional amount of force is
commanded from the prime mover regardless of the feedback value. The PID loop in this situation uses
the feedback information to change the combined output to reduce the remaining difference between
the process setpoint and the feedback value. Working together, the combined open-loop feed-forward
controller and closed-loop PID controller can provide a more responsive, stable and reliable control
system.

[edit] Other improvements

In addition to feed-forward, PID controllers are often enhanced through methods such as PID gain
scheduling (changing parameters in different operating conditions), fuzzy logic or computational verb
logic [10] [11] . Further practical application issues can arise from instrumentation connected to the
controller. A high enough sampling rate, measurement precision, and measurement accuracy are
required to achieve adequate control performance.

[edit] Cascade control

One distinctive advantage of PID controllers is that two PID controllers can be used together to yield
better dynamic performance. This is called cascaded PID control. In cascade control there are two PIDs
arranged with one PID controlling the set point of another. A PID controller acts as outer loop
controller, which controls the primary physical parameter, such as fluid level or velocity. The other
controller acts as inner loop controller, which reads the output of outer loop controller as set point,
usually controlling a more rapid changing parameter, flowrate or acceleration. It can be mathematically
proven[citation needed] that the working frequency of the controller is increased and the time constant
of the object is reduced by using cascaded PID controller.[vague].

[edit] Physical implementation of PID control

In the early history of automatic process control the PID controller was implemented as a mechanical
device. These mechanical controllers used a lever, spring and a mass and were often energized by
compressed air. These pneumatic controllers were once the industry standard.
Electronic analog controllers can be made from a solid-state or tube amplifier, a capacitor and a
resistance. Electronic analog PID control loops were often found within more complex electronic
systems, for example, the head positioning of a disk drive, the power conditioning of a power supply,
or even the movement-detection circuit of a modern seismometer. Nowadays, electronic controllers
have largely been replaced by digital controllers implemented with microcontrollers or FPGAs.
Most modern PID controllers in industry are implemented in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or
as a panel-mounted digital controller. Software implementations have the advantages that they are
relatively cheap and are flexible with respect to the implementation of the PID algorithm.
Variable voltages may be applied by the time proportioning form of Pulse-width modulation (PWM) –
a cycle time is fixed, and variation is achieved by varying the proportion of the time during this cycle
that the controller outputs +1 (or −1) instead of 0. On a digital system the possible proportions are
discrete – e.g., increments of .1 second within a 2 second cycle time yields 20 possible steps:
percentage increments of 5% – so there is a discretization error, but for high enough time resolution
this yields satisfactory performance.

[edit] Alternative nomenclature and PID forms

[edit] Ideal versus standard PID form
The form of the PID controller most often encountered in industry, and the one most relevant to tuning
algorithms is the standard form. In this form the Kp gain is applied to the Iout, and Dout terms, yielding:
where
Ti is the integral time
Td is the derivative time

In the ideal parallel form, shown in the controller theory section

the gain parameters are related to the parameters of the standard form through and . This parallel form,
where the parameters are treated as simple gains, is the most general and flexible form. However, it is
also the form where the parameters have the least physical interpretation and is generally reserved for
theoretical treatment of the PID controller. The standard form, despite being slightly more complex
mathematically, is more common in industry.
[edit] Laplace form of the PID controller
Sometimes it is useful to write the PID regulator in Laplace transform form:
Having the PID controller written in Laplace form and having the transfer function of the controlled
system makes it easy to determine the closed-loop transfer function of the system.

[edit] PID Pole Zero Cancellation

The PID equation can be written in this form:
When this form is used it is easy to determine the closed loop transfer function.
If
Then
This can be very useful to remove unstable poles

[edit] Series/interacting form

Another representation of the PID controller is the series, or interacting form
where the parameters are related to the parameters of the standard form through
, , and

with
.

This form essentially consists of a PD and PI controller in series, and it made early (analog) controllers
easier to build. When the controllers later became digital, many kept using the interacting form.

[edit] Discrete implementation

The analysis for designing a digital implementation of a PID controller in a Microcontroller (MCU) or
FPGA device requires the standard form of the PID controller to be discretised [12]. Approximations
for first-order derivatives are made by backward finite differences. The integral term is discretised,
with a sampling time Δt,as follows,
The derivative term is approximated as,
Thus, a velocity algorithm for implementation of the discretised PID controller in a MCU is obtained
by differentiating u(t), using the numerical definitions of the first and second derivative and solving for
u(tk) and finally obtaining:

[edit] Pseudocode
Here is a simple software loop that implements the PID algorithm in its 'ideal, parallel' form:
previous_error = 0
integral = 0
start:
error = setpoint - actual_position
integral = integral + (error*dt)
 derivative = (error - previous_error)/dt
output = (Kp*error) + (Ki*integral) + (Kd*derivative)
previous_error = error
wait(dt)
goto start

[edit] PI controller
Basic block of a PI controller.
A PI Controller (proportional-integral controller) is a special case of the PID controller in which the
derivative (D) of the error is not used.
The controller output is given by
where Δ is the error or deviation of actual measured value (PV) from the set-point (SP).
Δ = SP - PV.

A PI controller can be modelled easily in software such as Simulink using a "flow chart" box involving
Laplace operators:
where
G = KP = proportional gain
G / τ = KI = integral gain

Setting a value for G is often a trade off between decreasing overshoot and increasing settling time.
The lack of derivative action may make the system more steady in the steady state in the case of noisy
data. This is because derivative action is more sensitive to higher-frequency terms in the inputs.
Without derivative action, a PI-controlled system is less responsive to real (non-noise) and relatively
fast alterations in state and so the system will be slower to reach setpoint and slower to respond to
perturbations than a well-tuned PID system may be.