Review of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms to tune the PID controller parameters for automatic voltage regulator

Abstract: A Proportional- Integral- Derivative (PID) controller is required to bring a system back to the stable operating region as soon as possible following a disturbance or discrepancy. For successful operation of the PID controller, it is necessary to design the controller parameters in a manner that will render low optimization complexity, less memory for operation, fast convergence, and should be able to operate dynamically. Recent investigations have postulated many different meta-heuristic algorithms for efficient tuning of PID controller under various system milieus. However, researchers have seldom compared their custom made objective functions with previous investigations while proposing new algorithmic methods. This paper focuses on a detailed study on the research progress, deficiency, accomplishment and future scopes of recently proposed heuristic algorithms to designing and tuning the PID controller parameters for an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system. Objective functions, including ITSE, ITAE, IAE, ISE, and ZLG, are considered to enumerate a measurable outcome of the algorithms. Considering a slight variation in the sytem gain parameters of the algorithms, the observed PID gain with ITSE results in 0.81918 - 1.9499 for K_p, 0.24366 - 1.4608 for K_i, and 0.31840 - 0.9683 for K_d. Whereas with ITAE the values are 0.24420 - 1.2771, 0.14230 - 0.8471, and 0.04270 - 0.4775, respectively. The time domain and frequency domain characteristics also changes significantly with each objective function. Our outlined comparison will be a guideline for investigating any newer algorithms in the field.