Adaptive and non-adaptive model predictive control of an irrigation channel

The performance achieved with both adaptive and non-adaptative Model Predictive Control (MPC) when applied to a pilot irrigation channel is evaluated. Several control structures are considered, corresponding to various degrees of centralization of sensor information, ranging from local upstream control of the different channel pools to multivariable control using only proximal pools, and centralized multivariable control relying on a global channel model. In addition to the non-adaptative version, an adaptive MPC algorithm based on redundantly estimated multiple models is considered and tested with and without feedforward of adjacent pool levels, both for upstream and downstream control. In order to establish a baseline, the results of upstream and local PID controllers are included for comparison. A systematic simulation study of the performances of these controllers, both for disturbance rejection and reference tracking is shown.