Decentralized control for discrete-time LTI systems: Lower bound analysis of H_∞ performance achievable via LTI controllers

This paper is concerned with the decentralized H_∞ controller synthesis problem for discrete-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. In spite of intensive research efforts over the last several decades, this problem is believed to be non-convex and still outstanding in general. Therefore most existing approaches resort to heuristic optimization algorithms that do not allow us to draw any definite conclusion on the quality of the designed controllers. To get around this difficult situation, in this paper, we propose convex optimization procedures for computing lower bounds of the H _∞ performance that is achievable via decentralized LTI controllers of any order. In particular, we show that sharpened lower bounds can be obtained by making good use of structures of the LTI plant typically observed in the decentralized control setting. We illustrate via numerical examples that these lower bounds are indeed useful to ensure the good quality of decentralized controllers designed by a heuristic optimization.