A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate

HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate

HaiGen Hu1,2, LiHong Xu2, Juan Chen3, Songwei Zeng1
1,
School of Information Engineering, Zhejiang Agriculture & Forestry University,
Lin'an City, 311300, Zhejiang Province, PR China
2,
Dept. of Control Science and Engineering, Tongji University,Shanghai, 200092, PR China
3,
Dept. of Syndey Institute of Language and Commerce, Shanghai University,
Shanghai, 201800 , PR China
hnhhg@163.com, xulhk@163.com, chenjuan82@shu.edu.cn, zsw@zafu.edu.cn

Abstract
In this paper, a novel anti-windup scheme is proposed for the prevention of proportional–integral–
derivative (PID) controller integrator saturation by introducing a changing integration rate into the
integral term. The method can achieve smooth adjustment for the integral term in a stepless way
according to the error size, and it is easily implemented and has been successfully applied to a
greenhouse climate control problem. The results show that the proposed anti-windup method can
provide better closed-loop performance compared with the conventional AWBT method.

Keywords: Anti-windup, Integrator windup, PID controller, Greenhouse climate control

1. Introduction

The greenhouse climate control problem is to create a favorable environment for the crop in order to
reach predetermined results for high yield, high quality and low costs. Despite the advent of various
advanced control techniques and related strategies for the greenhouse climate control in recent years
[1-7], proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers are undoubtedly still the most adopted
controllers in the real-world engineering application of greenhouse production, owing to the simple
architecture, easy implementation and excellent performance. Therefore, it is widely adopted in
industries of process control, motor drives, automotive, fight control and instrumentation field [8-9].
However, it is a very difficult control problem to implement in practice, due to the complexity of the
greenhouse environments. For example, they are highly nonlinear, strong coupled and Multi-Input
Multi-Output (MIMO) systems, and they are largely perturbed by the outside weather (wind velocity,
outside temperature and humidity, etc.), and especially by many other practical constraints (actuators,
moistening cycle, etc.). Among these practical constraints, actuator saturation is often a major
impediment to achieving desired control performance, because the effects of this saturation
nonlinearity can cause significant deterioration in the closed-loop performance and even closed-loop
instability, which is naturally referred to as integrator windup when used in systems with PID
controllers.
Over the past forty years, a number of anti-windup strategies and techniques have been proposed to
avoid integrator windup in the literatures [10-13]. Basically, the typical method to deal with the
integrator windup problem is to tune the controller ignoring the actuator saturation and subsequently to
add an anti-windup compensator to prevent the degradation of performance [11]. Traditionally, there
are two different approaches, one is conditional integration method, in which the integration is limited
or stopped when certain conditions are satisfied, and another is back-calculation, in which the
difference between the saturated and the unsaturated control signal is fed back to the integral terms [12].
However, in practice, the existing anti-windup methods are not always effective to ensure the desired
closed-loop performance, particularly for some highly nonlinear and strong interference complex
systems like the greenhouse climate control problem.
In this paper, a modified conditional integration method is proposed for the greenhouse climate
control problem. The basic principle of the proposed anti-windup scheme is illustrated as follows: (1)
The integration is stopped when the actuator is saturated, and the error and the control signal have the
same sign; (2) Otherwise, the integral term is limited to a variation value with changes of the error by
introducing a changing integration rate into the integral term.

Journal of Convergence Information Technology(JCIT) 168

Volume7, Number12, July 2012
doi:10.4156/jcit.vol7.issue12.20
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the considered greenhouse
climate dynamic model and the corresponding nonlinear differential equations. Section 3 describes
general PID controller and the proposed anti-windup scheme. Section 4 presents the simulations and
results, and the comparison with the other traditional anti-windup scheme. Finally, a conclusion is
given in Section 5.

2. Description and Problem Formulation

2.1 Greenhouse Dynamic Model

The greenhouse environment is a complex dynamical system. Over the past decades, people have
gained a considerable understanding of greenhouse climate dynamics, and many methods describing
the dynamic process of greenhouse climate have been proposed. Traditionally, there are two different
approaches to describe it, one is based on energy and mass flows equations describing the process [14-
16], and another is based on the analysis of input-output data from the process by using a system
identification approach [17-19]. This paper deals with the first method for inside air temperature and
humidity of a greenhouse, and its physical model describes the flow and mass transfers generated by
the differences in energy and mass content between the inside and outside air, or by the control or
exogenous energy and mass inputs [20]. Most of the analytic models on analysis and control of the
environment inside greenhouses have been based on the following state space form:
x  f (t , x, u , v)
where x are states variables like indoor temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration, u
are control inputs like energy input by the heating system, fogging systems, ventilation system and
CO2 supply flux, v are external disturbances like solar radiation, outdoor temperature, humidity and
wind speed, t denotes time, and f () is a nonlinear function.

Disturbances
wind speed,
Solar Outside Outside … … CO2 concentration,
radiation temperature humidity etc
… …

heating (Qheater(t)) Inside

(Tin(t) )
temperature
ventilation (VR(t)) Crops Inside
(Hin(t))
humidity
spraying (Qfog(t))

CO2 injection CO2 concentration

Inputs Greenhouse Outputs

Figure 1. Greenhouse Climate Dynamic Model

In order to effectively validate the performance of the proposed algorithm below, the considered
greenhouse analytic expression is based on the heating/cooling/ventilating model in this work, which
can be obtained from many extant literatures [2, 21-22]. It can be summarized in the functional block
diagram given in Figure 1. Consider the related high costs, CO2 supply systems have not an extensive
use, therefore the related variables are not taken into account in this work. To simplify the model, we
consider only some primary disturbance variables, such as solar radiation, outside temperature and
humidity. According to the above analysis, the state equations have been formed based on the laws of

169
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

conservation of enthalpy and matter, and the dynamic behavior of the states is described by using the
following differential equations [22]:

 
dTin (t )

1
Qheater (t )  Si (t )  Q fog (t )   VR (t )  UA Tin (t )  Tout (t ) (1)
dt C pVT  VT C pVT 

dH in (t )

1
Q fog (t ) 
1
E ( Si (t ), H in (t ))  VR (t ) H in (t )  H out (t ) (2)
dt VH VH VH

where
Tin Tout is the indoor/outdoor air temperature (℃),
H in H out is the interior/exterior humidity ratio (g[h2O]/kg[dry air]),
UA is the heat transfer coefficient of enclosure (W/K),
V is the geometric volume of the greenhouse (m3),
 is the air density (1.2kg[air]m-3),
C p is the specific heat of air (1006Jkg-1K-1),
Qheater is the heat provided by the greenhouse heater (W),
Q fog is the water capacity of the fog system (g[H2O]s-1),
S i is the intercepted solar radiant energy (W/m2[ground]) ,
 is the latent heat of vaporization (2257Jg-1),
VR is the ventilation rate (m3[air]s-1),
E ( S i (t ), H in (t )) is the evapotranspiration rate of the plants (g[H2O]s-1),
VT and VH are the active mixing air volumes of the temperature and humidity, respectively.
Generally speaking, V and V are as small as 60%-70% of the geometric volume V of the
T H
greenhouse owing to short circuiting and stagnant zones exist in ventilated spaces.
It is also worth noticing that, to a first approximation, the evapotranspiration rate E ( S i (t ), H in (t ))
is in most part related to the intercepted solar radiant energy, through the following simplified relation:

Si (t )
E Si (t ), H in (t )      T H in (t ) (3)


where  is an overall coefficient to account for shading and leaf area index, dimensionless and  T is
the overall coefficient to account for thermodynamic constants and other factors affecting
evapotranspiration (i.e., stomata, air motion, etc.) [22].

2.2 Problem Formulation

The climate model provided above can be used in all seasons, and two variables have to be
controlled namely the indoor air temperature and the humidity ratio through the processes of heating
( Qheater (t ) ), ventilation ( VR (t ) ) and fogging ( Q fog (t ) ). For summer operation in this work,
Qheater (t ) is set to zero. The purposes of ventilation are to exhaust moist air and to replace it with
outside fresh air, to control high temperatures caused by the influx of solar radiation, to dehumidify the
greenhouse air when the humidity of the outside air is very low, to provide uniform air flow throughout
the entire greenhouse, and to maintain acceptable levels of gas concentration in the greenhouse.

170
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

Fogging systems (such as misters, fog units, or roof sprinklers) are primarily used for humidification of
the greenhouse. In fact, fogging system also plays a cooling role due to evaporative cooling. Moreover,
fresh air must be continually ventilated into the greenhouse, while warmed and humidified air to be
exhausted. When humidifying is occurred under sunny conditions, ventilation is necessary since the
greenhouse would soon become a steam bath without providing fresh dry air.
In order to effectively express the state-space form, we define the inside temperature and absolute
humidity as the dynamic state variables, x1 (t ) and x2 (t ) , respectively, the ventilation rate and the
water capacity of the fog system as the control (actuator) variables, u1 (t ) and u 2 (t ) , respectively,
and the intercepted solar radiant energy, the outside temperature, and the outside absolute humidity as
the disturbances, vi (t ), i  1,2,3 , Eq. (1) and (2) can alternatively be written in the following state-
space form:

 UA 1  1 UA 1
x1 (t )  x1 (t )  x1 (t )u1 (t )  u 2 (t )  v1 (t )  v 2 (t )  u1 (t )v 2 (t )
C pVT VT C pVT C pVT C pVT VT
(4)

 T 1  1 1
x 2  x 2 (t )  u 2 (t )  v1 (t )  x 2 (t )u1 (t )  u1 (t )v3 (t ) (5)
VH VH VH VH V H

Due to the complexity appearing as the cross-product terms between control and disturbance
variables, equations (4) and (5) are obviously coupled nonlinear equations, which cannot be put into
the rather familiar form of an affine analytic nonlinear system.

3. Design of Anti-windup PID Controller for Greenhouse Climate System

3.1. General PID Controller

A typical structure of a general PID controller involves three separate elements: the proportional,
integral and derivative values. The proportional value determines the reaction to the current error, the
integral value determines the reaction based on the sum of recent errors, and the derivative value
determines the reaction based on the rate at which the error has been changing. The mathematical
description of its control law is generally written in the ideal form in (6) or in the parallel form in (7)

1 t de(t )
u (t )  K p (e(t )  
Ti 0
e( )d  Td
dt
(6)

t de(t )
u (t )  K p e(t )  K i  e( )d  K d (7)
0 dt

where K p is the proportional gain, Ti is the integral time constant, Td is the derivative time constant,
K i  K p Ti is the integral gain and K d  K pTd is the derivative gain. And e(t ) is the current
error signal, which is defined as

e(t )  r (t )  y (t ) (8)

where r (t ) and y (t ) are the reference signal and process output, respectively.

171
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

3.2. Anti-windup Controller Design

All actuators have physical limitations, a control valve cannot be more than fully open or fully
closed, a motor has limited velocity, etc. For a PID controller, the integral term sums the error e(t )
over time. The result is that the integral response will continually increase over time unless the error is
zero, so that the control variable reaches the actuator limits. When this happens, the feedback loop is
broken and the system runs as an open loop because the actuator will remain at its limit independently
of the process output. Such case is called integrator windup. It is then required that the error has
opposite sign for a long period before things return to normal. The consequence is that any controller
with integral action may give large transients when the actuator saturates [12].
Consider the main purpose of the integral term is to eliminate the residual steady-state error that
occurs with a pure proportional controller during the normal PID control process, the integral action
should be enhanced when the error is small, otherwise weakened. Therefore, a changing integration
rate is introduced into the integral term, and it can weaken the effects of the integrator with the
increasing of the error under the nominal control conditions. The proposed anti-windup controller
structure block diagram is shown in Figure 2.

r u PD u us y

ki uI v
s

Figure 2. Proposed anti-windup PID controller block diagram

Besides, in order to simulate its behavior on a digital computer, we adopt a fourth-order Runge-
Kutta method with a small enough integration step. Hence, consider a typical digital positional PID
control algorithm, the corresponding control law (7) of each loop is rewritten as:

u (k )  u0  u PD (k )  u I (k )
e(k )  e(k  1) k
  (k ) K iTs  e(i )
(9)
 K p e( k )  K d
Ts i

where k and Ts is iterative step sampling time, respectively. u 0 is the corresponding initial value.
 (k ) is the changing integration rate, by which the integral term can be adjusted in a stepless way
according to the error size, defined as:

 1 if u s (k  1)  u(k  1) and u(k  1)  e(k)  0

 and e(k)  b

 a  b  e( k ) if u s (k  1)  u(k  1) and u(k  1)  e(k)  0
 (k )   (10)
a and b  e(k)  a  b


 otherwise
 0

172
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

4. Simulations and Results

In order to verify the efficiency and good performance of the proposed anti-windup control scheme,
a series of simulations are presented in the present section. For this example, we consider a greenhouse
of surface area 1000 m and a height of 4 m . The greenhouse has a shading screen that reduces the
2

incident solar radiation energy by 60%. The maximum water capacity of the fog system is 26
g[ H 2O]min -1m 3 . Maximum ventilation rate corresponds to 20 air changes per hour (22.2 m 3 s 1 ).
Parameter  takes the value 0.129524267 and β  0.015 kgmin m . The heat transfer
-1 2
T
1
coefficient is UA  25 kWK . The active mixing air volumes of the temperature and humidity are
given as VT  VH  0.65V . Moreover, the initial values of indoor air temperature and humidity ratio
are 25 ℃ and 20 g[ H 2 O ] / kg[ air ] , respectively. In order to demonstrate the ability of disturbance
rejection, we consider the external climatic fluctuation with a small range during short time. Solar
radiation S i , outdoor temperature Tout and relative humidity H out change in random ways as shown

External disturbances
350
S (W/m 2)

300
250
200
i

150
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

40
( C)

35
out

30
T

0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

20
(g/kg)

15
out
H

0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

Time (min)

Figure 3. Changes of outdoor climate

in Figure 3 to represent external disturbances. We consider a pair of square-wave reference inputs to

test its tracking performance by using two PID control loops. Indoor air temperature setpoint changes
between 33 and 20℃, where the humidity ratio set-point changes between 17 and 23 g[H2O]/kg[air]
(which corresponds to a relative humidity change between 60% and 76%).
To compare the performance of the proposed anti-windup method, we also adopt a called AWBT
method in the experiments, which employs linear control laws with an additional feedback term
involving the saturation error u  us (refer to Ref. [10] for details). The obtained output responses for
setpoint square-wave changes in temperature and humidity ratio are shown in Figure 4, and the
corresponding errors are illustrated in Figure 5. The results from the figures show that the proposed
anti-windup scheme performs well, and there is not nearly overshoot and the controlled process is
smooth, while significant overshoot and strenuous oscillation occur in the AWBT method. Obviously,
the propose method can achieve better closed-loop performance than the AWBT method.

173
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

Reference inputs and Greenhouse outputs

Reference inputs and Greenhouse outputs
35 35

30
30
Tin( C)

Tin( C)
25
25
20
20
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

24
24
22
22
Hin(g/kg)

Hin(g/kg)
20 20

18 18

16 16
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400
time (min) time (min)

(a) By the use of the AWBT method (b) By the use of the proposed anti-windup method
Figure 4. Tracking trajectory of square-wave for temperature and humidity ratio

Control errors of temperature and humidity Control errors of temperature and humidity
Temperature error ( C)

Temperature error ( C)
10 10

0 0

-10 -10

0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

10 10
Humidity error (g/kg)

Humidity error (g/kg)

5 5

0 0

-5 -5

-10 -10
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400
time(min) time(min)

(a) By the use of the AWBT method (b) By the use of the proposed anti-windup method
Figure 5. Tracking error of square-wave for temperature and humidity ratio

Figure 6 shows the corresponding control signals of the two methods. The proposed method can
provide a smoother state feedback control law than the AWBT method. Besides, the proposed anti-
windup controller can return more rapidly to linear operation than the AWBT anti-windup method.

Control signals Control signals

30 30
VR(m3[air]/s)
VR(m3[air]/s)

20 20

10 10

0 0
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400

30 30
Qfog (g[H2O]/s)
Qfog (g[H2O]/s)

20 20

10 10

0 0
0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 400
time (min) time (min)

(a) By the use of the AWBT method (b) By the use of the proposed anti-windup method
Figure 6. The corresponding control signals

174
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

5. Conclusions
In this paper, we propose a novel anti-windup scheme for the prevention of integrator saturation in
PID feedback control by introducing a changing integration rate into the integral term, which can
effectively weaken the effects of the integrator with the increasing of the error under the nominal
control conditions. The method is easily implemented and has been successfully demonstrated in the
simulation of a greenhouse climate control problem. The results show that the proposed anti-windup
scheme can provide better closed-loop performance compared with the conventional AWBT method.

6. Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grant No.
61174090 and 201800, the Education Department of Zhejiang Province of China under the Grant No.
Y201121231, Shanghai City Board of education scientific research innovation projects the Grant No.
12YZ029, and also by BEACON (An NSF Science and Technology Center for the Study of Evolution
in Action, Coop. Agmt.) of USA under the Grant No. DBI-0939454.

7. References

[1] Piñón, S., E. F. Camachoa, B. Kuchen, and M. Peña, Constrained predictive control of a
greenhouse. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 317-329,2005.
[2] Pasgianos, G. D., K. G. Arvanitis, P. Polycarpou, and N.Sigrimis, “A nonlinear feedback
technique for greenhouse environmental control”, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, vol.
40, no. 1-3, pp. 153-177, 2003.
[3] Miranda, R. C., E. Ventura-Ramos, R. R. Peniche-Vera, and G. Herrera-Riuz, “Fuzzy greenhouse
climate control system based on a field programmable gate array”, Biosystems Eng., vol. 94, no.2,
pp. 165-177, 2006.
[4] Bennis, N., J. Duplaix, G. Enéa, M. Haloua, and H. Youlal, “Greenhouse climate modelling and
robust control”, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 96-107, 2008.
[5] Hu, H., L. Xu, B. Zhu, and R. Wei, “A Compatible Control Algorithm for Greenhouse
Environment Control Based on MOCC Strategy”, Sensors, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 3281-3302, 2011.
[6] Hu, H. L. Xu, R. Wei, and B. Zhu, Multi-Objective Control Optimization for Greenhouse
Environment Using Evolutionary Algorithms. vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 5792-5807, 2011.
[7] Hai-Gen Hu, Li-Hong Xu, Rui-Hua Wei, Bing-Kun Zhu, "RBF Network Based Nonlinear Model
Reference Adaptive PD Controller Design for Greenhouse Climate*", IJACT: International
Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, Vol. 3, No. 9, pp. 357-366, 2011.
[8] Yi Jiangang, Lin Zan, "An Improved Digital PID Algorithm for Angle Position Electric-hydraulic
Servo System", JDCTA, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 74-81, 2011.
[9] Cai GuoQiang, Jia DongYue, Li Xiaofei, "A Incremental PID Barrier Control System Used in
Railway Crossing", IJACT, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 14-20, 2011.
[10] Scottedward Hodel, A., and Hall, C.E., “Variable-structure PID control to prevent integrator
windup”, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 48, no.2, pp. 442-451, 2001.
[11] A. Visioli, “Modified anti-windup scheme for PID controllers,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng.-Control
Theory, Appl., vol. 150, no. 1, pp. 49-54, Jan. 2003.
[12] K. J. Åström and T. Hägglund, “PID Controllers: Theory, Design, and Tuning”, Research Triangle
Park, NC: ISA, Jan. 1995.
[13] Jong-Woo Choi, and Sang-Cheol Lee, “Antiwindup Strategy for PI-Type Speed Controller”, IEEE
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 56, no.6, pp. 2039-2046, 2009.
[14] Nielsen, B. and H. Madsen, “Identification of a linear continuous time stochastic model of the heat
dynamic of a greenhouse”, J. Agr. Eng. Res., vol. 71, pp. 249-256, 1998.
[15] Tap, R. F., “Economics-based optimal control of greenhouse tomato crop production”, Ph.D.
thesis, Wageningen University, 2000.
[16] Ghosal, M. K., G. N. Tiwari, N. S. L. Srivastava, “Modeling and experimental validation of a
greenhouse with evaporative cooling by moving water film over external shade cloth”, Energy and
Buildings, vol. 35, pp. 843-850, 2003.

175
 A Novel Anti-windup PID Control Scheme for Greenhouse Climate
HaiGen Hu, LiHong Xu, Juan Chen, Songwei Zeng

[17] Fathi Fourati, Mohamed Chtourou, “A greenhouse control with feedforward and recurrent neural
networks”, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, vol. 15, pp. 1016-1028, 2007.
[18] Trejo-Perea, M., G. Herrera-Ruiz, J. Rios-Moreno, R.C. Miranda and E. Rivas-Araiza,
“Greenhouse Energy Consumption Prediction using Neural Networks Models”, Int. J. Agric. Biol.,
vol. 11, pp. 1-6, 2009.
[19] He, F., Ma, C., “Modeling greenhouse air humidity by means of artificial neural network and
principal component analysis”, Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 71, pp. S19-S23, 2010.
[20] José Boaventura Cunha, “Greenhouse Climate Models: An Overview”, Proc. EFITA 2003
Conference, Debrecen, Hungary, pp. 823-829.
[21] Magdi A. Koutb, Nabila .M. El-Rabaie, Hamdi A. Awad, Ibrahim A. Abd El-Hamid,
“Environmental control for plants using intelligent control systems”, Proc. Fifth International
Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture,, AIA’ 04, IFAC, Cairo, Egypt, pp. 101-106,
March, 2004.
[22] Albright L. D., Gates R. S., Arvanities K. G., Drysdale A. E., “Environmental control for plants on
earth and in space”, IEEE control system magazine, pp. 28-47, 2001.

176