An Information Theoretic Approach to Regulation Systems

Based on the work of Enegell(1985), a novel approach to the analaysis of control systems by means of information-theoretical concepts is presented. Using results from rate-distortion theory, the requisite variety of the regulator necessary for a certian performance is derived. This theory is used to analyse feedback regulation systems, in particular, the Minimum Variance Control law for linear systems with a quadratic performance criterion. The main result of this paper has implications for the evaluation of L∞-bounds on analytic functions.