Metaheuristic PID Design to Optimize DC-DC Converter’s Response to Wide Load Variations

Conventional PID design techniques for DC-DC converters have two main drawbacks: they employ small-signal linearization and rely on high stability margins to cope with wide load variations, thus worsening the dynamic performance; they donot make it easy to impose design constraints, e.g., on the output voltage’s overshoot or settling time. The PID design technique proposed in this paper overcomes such issues. It is based on simulating the system response to a set of chosen transients with different controller parameters, searching for the best parameter set. This goal can be achieved efficiently by formulating an optimization problem and solving it with a metaheuristic algorithm. Unlike other approaches that optimize the controller only for variations of the converter’s output voltage reference, the proposed technique can consider wide load variations. The algorithm is implemented in MATLAB and validated through simulations and experimental tests in several scenarios.