636
3, MAY 2013
Air-to-Fuel Ratio Switching Frequency Control for
Gasoline Engines
Jason Meyer, Stephen Yurkovich, Fellow, IEEE, and Shawn Midlam-Mohler
Abstract—Modern gasoline internal combustion engines use a
variety of technologies to enhance the efficiency of fresh air induc-
tion. These technologies, which include variable valve timing and
variable intake geometry systems, also make it more difficult to
predict the mass of fresh air that is trapped during the induction
stroke of the engine because they not only affect the residual gas
fraction of the trapped air charge, but also the wave dynamics of
the system. As the number of controllable actuators increases, this
estimation problem becomes even more difficult. As these technolo-
gies continue to develop, the importance of robustness in air-to-
fuel ratio control continues to grow. This paper presents an air-to-
fuel ratio control algorithm based on a switching frequency regu-
lator that has favorable robust stability properties in the presence
of both input and model errors. Instead of modeling the air path
system with a simplified model, this control architecture considers
the air estimate as a control input. As a result, air estimation er-
rors behave like input errors, not modeling errors. By using the
rich-to-lean and lean-to-rich air-to-fuel ratio switching frequencies
of the pre-catalyst exhaust gas oxygen sensor as the primary feed-
back signal, the control laws are completely independent of the pa-
rameters of the plant model. The performance of this controller is
demonstrated both with a robust stability analysis and through a
vehicle-based experimental validation.
Index Terms—Air-to-fuel ratio (AFR), delay systems, emissions,
engine control, robustness, stability.
I. INTRODUCTION
S INCE the advent of the three-way catalyst (TWC), most
air-to-fuel ratio (AFR) control architectures consist of a
primary feedback loop based on a pre-catalyst AFR measure-
ment and a secondary feedback loop based on a post-catalyst
AFR measurement. Including this study, the emphasis of most
AFR control research is pre-catalyst AFR control because
most of the control authority resides within this control loop.
It has been well documented that a TWC has the highest
steady-state conversion efficiencies when the incoming exhaust
gases are produced from stoichiometric combustion. If the
pre-catalyst AFR could be regulated perfectly to stoichiom-
etry, then tail-pipe emissions would be minimized. However,
Manuscript received November 10, 2011; accepted January 24, 2012. Manu-
script received in final form February 15, 2012. Date of publication March 21,
2012; date of current version nulldate. Recommended by Associate Editor U.
Christen.
J. Meyer and S. Midlam-Mohler are with the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Center for Automotive Research, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43212 USA (e-mail: meyer.506@osu.edu).
S. Yurkovich is with the Department of Systems Engineering, University of
Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080 USA.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2012.2188631
1063-6536/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO.
even the best pre-catalyst AFR controllers cannot eliminate
all deviations from stoichiometry. While trying to regulate
to stoichiometry, most pre-catalyst AFR controllers produce
uncontrolled limit-cycle type behavior (e.g., chattering). Oscil-
lating the AFR around stoichiometry extends the conversion
efficiency range of a TWC [1], [2]. However, as shown in [3],
the amplitude and frequency of these oscillations strongly affect
the conversion efficiency; therefore, uncontrolled oscillations
due to limit cycle behavior should be avoided.
Two types of oxygen sensors, binary exhaust gas oxygen
(EGO) sensors and universal exhaust gas oxygen (UEGO)
sensors, can be used to provide a feedback measurement of
the composition of the combustion mixture. A UEGO sensor
indicates the AFR of the combustion mixture, whereas a binary
EGO sensor only indicates whether the mixture is rich or lean.
For a narrow range of AFR values near stoichiometry, however,
a binary EGO sensor does provide magnitude information.
Within this range, a binary EGO has a much higher sensitivity
to AFR than a counterpart UEGO sensor. As long as an accurate
AFR estimator can be designed, an EGO-based control scheme
can reject disturbances as well as a UEGO based control
scheme. Given that the desired AFR target is stoichiometry,
the higher sensitivity provided by a binary EGO sensor enables
more precise AFR control during steady-state operation. For
this reason, many of the gasoline powered automobiles in
production today still use low cost binary EGO sensors.
Most advanced control formulations such as controllers
[4], Lyapunov-based controllers [5], model-predictive con-
trollers [6] and linear parameter varying controllers [7], [8]
require UEGO sensors, and are developed using overly simpli-
fied plant models. The Lyapunov-based control law developed
in [5] for example is based on a simplified filling and emptying
model along with basic curve fitting approximations. Similarly,
[4] uses a simple discrete state-space model and [7] uses a first
order lag model. Most of these models do not account for the
time varying transport delays of the exhaust system. This type
of unmodelled dynamics leads to uncontrolled oscillations. Not
only are the performances of these controllers limited by these
potentially significant modeling errors, but stability results
proven for an ideal system may become invalid.
Sliding mode controllers possess some inherent robustness
characteristics, and several formulations such as [9]–[11] are de-
signed based on binary EGO sensor feedback. However, these
formulations tend to rely on empirical models. Even with a
very accurate empirical engine model, sliding mode controllers
struggle to precisely regulate the AFR during steady state. Chat-
tering is an inherent problem common to all sliding mode con-
trollers. For systems which are characterized by time varying
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES
delays such as internal combustion engines, chattering is even
more difficult to overcome. As a result, sliding mode based AFR
controllers are able to reject disturbances well but have diffi-
culty precisely regulating the EGO switching frequency once
stoichiometry is reached.
Because current control formulations are not able to precisely
regulate the AFR trajectory to stoichiometry, the average AFR
may be slightly rich or slightly lean even when the controller is
meeting its control objective. This result is further compounded
by sensor errors and sensor dynamics. The composition of
the exhaust stream can cause oxygen sensor deception due to
varying diffusion rates of the gas constituents, thus indicating
an AFR or switching point different from the actual AFR
incident on the sensor [12]–[14]. Although these errors can be
mitigated with a secondary AFR control loop, they still have a
negative impact on the tailpipe-out emissions.
In this paper, a unified EGO-based AFR control architecture
built on a switching frequency regulation design is presented.
This control design is based on the controller in [15] which
was shown to outperform similar designs such as the phase-lock
loop controller developed in [16]. Instead of trying to directly
regulate the AFR to a constant value of stoichiometry, an AFR
switching period control structure accurately tracks a periodic
waveform that has a desired amplitude, frequency, and offset.
By actively controlling the AFR fluctuations around stoichiom-
etry, which are left uncontrolled in regulation controllers, the
stored oxygen mass within the TWC can be directly maintained
at its optimal level, thus maximizing the catalyst conversion ef-
ficiency. This switching frequency based AFR controller detects
disturbances by comparing the duration of time between output
switches to some desired value. Even though magnitude infor-
mation is not directly provided by a binary EGO sensor, the
average AFR can be inferred from the switching period. Be-
cause the feedback signal is actually the switching period, not
the switching frequency, this controller will henceforth be re-
ferred to as an AFR switching period controller.
One of the key benefits of this control architecture is its ro-
bustness to disturbances and modeling errors. Instead of mod-
eling the air system with a low order control-oriented model,
the control system considers the trapped air mass estimate as
an input. Since production vehicles already include algorithms
to accurately estimate the trapped air mass, many of the typ-
ical modeling errors that affect other control formulations can
be eliminated without any additional calibration effort. As an
added benefit, air estimation errors affect the system as input
disturbances, not as modeling errors which are more difficult
to compensate. With this control architecture, the time varying
plant delay is accounted for without the need for an estimator,
rendering its performance invariant to modeling errors.
II. SWITCHING PERIOD CONTROLLER
If the plant delay is known perfectly and a UEGO sensor is
used, then the AFR control problem posed in this paper could be
formulated into a tracking control problem. In this ideal case, the
measured AFR could be compared to a predicted AFR to gen-
erate an error signal. Many well known techniques such as the
internal model principle could be used to develop a controller
that asymptotically drives this error to zero. It is important to
637
note that this type of control is only effective when the plant
delay is predicted exactly. In direct contrast to the control ob-
jective, phasing errors brought on by delay misestimation cause
uncontrolled limit cycle behavior. As shown in [17], the plant
delay varies markedly and is very difficult to predict, especially
during transients.
By recasting the problem into a EGO switching period con-
trol problem, it is possible to track a desired AFR trajectory in
terms of amplitude, frequency and offset. In such a scheme, the
measured AFR is not directly compared to a predicted AFR,
so the phasing and delay estimation issues are eliminated. The
switching period based AFR controller proposed in this paper
makes use of the fact that the average AFR (or equivalently
the AFR offset error) can be estimated by observing the rate by
which a pre-catalyst EGO sensor switches from rich to lean and
lean to rich. This discrete time controller operates in the engine
event domain. This domain is a subset of the crank angle do-
main where the number of events per engine cycle is equal to the
number of cylinders. For a four stroke engine with cylin-
ders, the number of crank angle degrees per event is .
Consider the control diagram of an AFR switching period con-
troller depicted in Fig. 1. Beginning from the top center of this
diagram and moving clockwise, the control system consists of
a plant model, an EGO sensor switching detector, a coordinated
set of closed loop compensators and finally a set of feed-forward
contributions.
The plant model upon which this controller is developed in-
cludes both the physical engine and a fuel dynamics compen-
sator. Define the fuel/air equivalence ratio (EQR) of the com-
bustion mixture as
(1)
where is the trapped fuel mass, is the trapped air
mass and is the stoichiometric AFR. The input to the fuel
dynamics compensator is the desired EQR corrected to over-
come air and fuel estimation errors. Using this input, the fuel
dynamics compensator calculates a desired fuel mass according
to
(2)
where is the desired trapped fuel mass, is the esti-
mated trapped air mass and is the time index in engine events.
Following this, the fuel dynamics compensator adjusts the in-
jected fuel mass to ensure that the trapped fuel mass is indeed the
desired fuel mass. A fuel dynamics compensator can be gener-
ated by inverting one of the well known wall wetting dynamics
models such as [18] or [19].
With the inclusion of the fuel dynamics compensator, is
treated as the input to the plant model. The output of the plant
is a binary signal produced by the pre-catalyst EGO sensor
which indicates the relative richness/leanness of the exhaust
stream. The switching detector monitors the pre-catalyst EGO
measurement signal to produce an output which repre-
sents the number of events since the last EGO switch and an
output which identifies the occurrence of an EGO switch.
The output takes a null value of zero when an EGO
638 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013
Fig. 1. AFR switching period control diagram.
switch is not detected and indicates the achieved switching pe-
riod when an EGO switch is detected according to
if EGO switches
(3)
otherwise
where is the event number of the previous output switch.
Each output of the switching detector is compared to the desired
switching period to produce a feedback error signal. The desired
switching period is one half times the period of the dither signal.
Although any periodic signal can be tracked by switching period
control, this paper focuses on sinusoidal signals. When the pe-
riodic dither waveform is a sinusoid, it can be described by
(4)
where is the reference dither waveform in units of EQR,
is the dither amplitude in units of EQR and is the dither
period in units of engine events.
The dither period and amplitude are two of the most impor-
tant design parameters. Their numerical values may help to pro-
vide some context. The experimental validation of this control
architecture was performed on a 2006 Saturn Ion powered by a
2.4 liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine with variable intake and
exhaust valve timing. For this engine, the dither period and am-
plitude were chosen to be 25 events and 0.0115, respectively.
The rationale used to select these values is based on the stability
properties of the control system and is discussed in Section III.
Closed loop corrections are made when the EGO sensor
output switches either slower than desired via the late switching
compensator or faster than desired via the early switching com-
pensator. To allow for a small range of switching periods to
produce zero control error, a deadzone is applied to the desired
switching period signals. The late switching compensator
makes both proportional and integral corrections if more than
the desired number of events have passed since the last output
switching occurrence. The late switching compensator con-
tinues to make corrections until the output switches. The error
signal fed to the late switching compensator is governed by
if
(5)
otherwise
where is the size of the deadzone region.
Conversely, the early switching compensator makes a one-time
integral correction whenever the output switches earlier than
the desired switching period. The error signal fed to the early
switching compensator satisfies
if
otherwise.
(6)
With these definitions, the switching period control laws can
now be defined.
By developing the AFR switching period controller in the
EQR domain, the complex air and fuel dynamics can be pulled
outside of the control model. Obviously, the accuracies to which
the trapped fuel and air mass can be estimated strongly influ-
ence the performance of any AFR controller. With this structure,
however, the error in predicting these quantities are viewed as
additive input disturbances. The corrected EQR signal fed to the
fuel dynamics compensator can be described by
(7)
where is the desired EQR offset, is the contribution from
the switching period controller and is a lumped disturbance
variable which represents the combined effect of air estimation
errors, fuel estimation errors, sensor errors and unknown con-
tributions from the evaporative canister system.
For simplicity, the feedback control law defines the state as
the difference between and to arrive at
(8)
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES 639

The relative composition of the exhaust stream as measured by

the pre-catalyst EGO sensor can be defined as

(9)

where is the largest possible plant delay and is the th co-

efficient of the finite impulse response model of the system, both
of which depend on the trapped air mass per cylinder and
the engine speed . This relationship follows from [20] and
accounts for the transport lag of the exhaust system, the mixing
phenomena and the sensor dynamics. It should be noted that this Fig. 2. Sine wave with parameters of interest highlighted.
approximation is only used to prove the stability of the control
system; the performance of the AFR control does not depend
on the accuracy of this model. The stability analysis presented Provided , it directly follows that
in this paper only depends upon the fact that the plant delay is
bounded by a maximum value of events. (15)
The total control action taken by the AFR switching period
controller can be represented with the following: or equivalently

(10) (16)
where is the proportional contribution from the late switching
compensator, is the integral contribution from the late when . Built on this last relationship, the
switching compensator, and is the integral contribution from integral action of the early switching compensator is governed
the early switching compensator. The proportional correction by
of the late switching compensator is defined as
(17)
(11)
where is the gain of the early switching compensator and
satisfies
and the integral correction is defined as

(12)
(18)
where is the proportional gain of the late switching com- where is a calibration parameter.
pensator and is the integral gain of the late switching com-
pensator. Both and are calibration parameters which are III. STABILITY AND CONTROL GAIN SELECTION
smooth functions of the operating conditions (manifold pressure
The control laws within an AFR switching period controller
and engine speed).
are all represented in the EQR domain allowing air estimation
One of the most unique characteristics of an AFR switching
errors and fueling errors, including those resulting from the fuel
period control structure is the use of trigonometry within the
dynamics compensator, to be treated as a single additive EQR
early switching compensator to relate the switching period to
disturbance. In this domain, the engine system behaves like a
the average EQR offset. Let be the average EQR offset
single input (EQR of the combustion mixture), single output
error defined by
(relative richness/leanness of the exhaust gas mixture at the
EGO sensor) system. A rigorous analysis of the closed-loop
(13) behavior of the combustion mixture EQR trajectory has been
performed. The fundamental results of this analysis are now re-
ported in the form of three theorems. The corresponding proofs
In the presence of a constant offset error that has a magnitude
to these theorems are provided in Appendices A–C. In what
less than the dither amplitude, the number of events between
follows, define as the minimum value of the plant delay
EGO switches for the open loop system can be directly related
and as the maximum value of the plant delay. Also let
to the average EQR offset error using trigonometry. Consider
represent a special set defined by
the height parameter and length parameter depicted in Fig. 2
for the general sinusoid function . For all values (19)
of , the height can be related to the length using
the trigonometric identity which satisfies the invariant property that
(14) (20)
640 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013
and has the additional property that all trajectories within
cross the origin (which physically corresponds to
the switching of the EGO voltage) at least every events.
Theorem 3.1: For all disturbance trajectories which satisfy
(21)
and
(22)
, there exists a scalar and an integer
such that the closed-loop trajectory of an AFR switching period
control system remains bounded and converges to the special
invariant set in finite time.
Theorem 3.2: For any constant disturbance, there exist a
scalar
(23)
and a corresponding scalar
(24)
such that the closed-loop trajectory of an AFR switching period
control system remains bounded and converges to the invariant
set in finite time.
Theorem 3.3: For any constant disturbance, the closed-loop
trajectory of an AFR switching period control system converges
to a sinusoidal signal with a frequency and amplitude equal to
the frequency and amplitude of the imposed periodic signal with
an offset error (distance to the EQR setpoint) that is bounded
by
(25)
provided that
(26)
(27)
and
(28)
The combination of these three theorems is quite powerful.
Since Theorem 3.1 ensures that for any bounded disturbance
the closed-loop system trajectory remains bounded, the stability
properties in Theorem 3.2 and Theorem 3.3 can be extended
to all time intervals where the disturbance remains constant. In
practice, air and fuel estimation errors are essentially constant
provided the operating conditions change sufficiently slow. As
the engine speed and manifold pressure equilibrate after a load
change transient, for example, the lumped disturbance variable
converges to a constant value. Once this occurs, the system be-
haves as it would for a constant disturbance and therefore re-
mains close to the origin while switching at regular intervals.
Theorem 3.3 is also very practical because it helps dictate
the values of the dither parameters and the control gains. To
ensure steady-state tracking, the dither period must satisfy (27).
The best performance, however, is achieved when the dither pe-
riod is as close to this bound as possible. Having a small but
finite value for ensures that the system converges to the de-
sired dither signal in finite time, rendering the controller more
practical. Even in the presence of low frequency disturbances,
it is still possible for the system to reach this set. Since the size
of also dictates the size of the dither maximum offset error,
it should be chosen as small as possible. For the four cylinder
engine used to validate this control structure, the largest plant
delay is 11 events. Based on these considerations, was chosen
to be 0.5 events and was selected to be 25 events.
Selection of the control gain represents a trade off between
robustness and steady-state performance. To reject disturbances
as fast as possible, the value of should be maximized. To re-
produce the sinusoidal dither in the presence of a constant distur-
bance, the control gain must satisfy the upper bound described
in (26). It is important to note that can be selected as a func-
tion of the operating conditions and the bounds described in (26)
need not be satisfied at every operating condition. For the oper-
ating regions where (26) is satisfied, the system will converge
to the desired dither waveform. For the operating regions where
(26) is not satisfied, the desired waveform may not be repro-
duced; however, Theorem 3.2 guarantees that the EQR will still
remain close to stoichiometry. This ensures that reasonable per-
formance would be achieved if the engine were operated in such
a region for an extended period of time.
Based on the observed performance of the production AFR
controller, the design target for disturbance rejection was the
removal of a 0.10 EQR error within 150 events. The value of
required to achieve this performance can be
identified by dividing the two quantities. Assuming this value
for , the dither amplitude was selected to be 0.0125 to satisfy
(26). With all of the key dither parameters identified, the value
of as well as the gains scheduled values of and were cal-
ibrated in simulation. The calibration procedures are outlined in
[15]. The optimal value of was found to be 0.477. The cali-
bration surfaces for and are shown in Fig. 3 along with
a summary of the key design parameters. Within respect to the
surface plot, all of the operating conditions below the white
line meet the requirements described in Theorem 3.3. Because
steady-state operation is unlikely to occur in the operating re-
gions above this line, disturbance rejection performance is more
important and thus larger values of were selected.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
Using a chassis dynomometer, the performance of the
switching period controller was validated with a 2.4 liter,
four-cylinder gasoline engine with variable intake and exhaust
valve timing. The switching period controller, including the air
and fuel estimators, used the same sensor set as the production
vehicle. To quantify the controller performance, a pre-catalyst
UEGO sensor was installed in the same location as the pre-cata-
lyst EGO sensor. Since this engine has four independent inputs
(engine speed, intake manifold pressure, intake cam timing and
exhaust cam timing), it would be difficult to accurately capture
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES
Fig. 3. Calibration values for the AFR switching period controller.
Fig. 4. EQR response comparison: 0.10 EQR disturbance at event 250 and 770.
the combined effect of these inputs with a simple control-ori-
ented model of the air path system. However, the trapped fresh
air mass is effectively predicted with a volumetric efficiency
based estimator. Even though the volumetric efficiency varies
as a function of the inputs, this relationship can be captured
with a four dimensional lookup table. Similarly, a third-order
gain scheduled fuel dynamics compensator is used to correct
for the fuel dynamics. This compensator performs quite well
especially during steady-state operation.
As a preliminary means of validation, the disturbance rejec-
tion performance of the AFR switching period controller was
tested and compared to the production controller. For this test a
positive 0.10 EQR step disturbance was applied and then later
removed resulting in a negative 0.10 EQR step disturbance. As
demonstrated in Fig. 4, both controllers have approximately the
same disturbance rejection rate. As desired, the AFR switching
period controller was able to reject a disturbance of this mag-
nitude in approximately 150 events. Unlike the production con-
troller, however, the AFR switching period controller produces
virtually no overshoot once stoichiometry is reached.
To further quantify the effectiveness of the AFR switching
period controller, an FTP-72 drive cycle was run using both the
production AFR controller and the AFR switching period con-
troller. To effectively control the AFR, disturbances introduced
by transient operation must be quickly rejected in order to main-
641
tain a near stoichiometric AFR. As demonstrated in Fig. 5, the
distributions of the pre-catalyst EQR values achieved by the two
controllers appear similar. Further analysis of these distributions
reveals that the AFR switching period controller reduces the oc-
currence frequency of high amplitude EQR errors.
To quantify this reduction, the percentage of occurrences in
which the measured pre-catalyst EQR falls within an expanding
range of EQR values is provided in Table I. Both controllers are
able to keep the AFR within EQR from stoichiometry
for approximately two thirds of the drive cycle. When consid-
ering errors as large as 0.05, the robustness benefits of an AFR
switching period controller can already be observed. The occu-
rance frequency of EQR errors larger than 0.05 is 10.6% for the
AFR switching period controller and 12.3% for the production
controller. The AFR switching period controller also reduces
the occurrence frequency of EQR errors larger than 0.10 (2.4%
versus 3.9%) and EQR errors larger 0.15 (0.9% versus 1.6%).
When the response of the two controllers are compared
side-by-side, the performance advantages of the AFR switching
period controller are readily apparent. Fig. 6 compares the per-
formance of the AFR switching period controller to the
production AFR controller for the first maneuver of the FTP-72
drive cycle. This data was collected in the event domain;
therefore, the datasets do not perfectly align. As shown in the
top plot, the engine speed trajectory matches well between
642
Fig. 5. Distribution of the pre-catalyst EQR for an FTP-72 drive cycle.
TABLE I
DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRE-CATALYST EQR OVER AN FTP-72 DRIVE CYCLE
the two drive cycles. The middle plot of Fig. 6 compares the
pre-catalyst EQR traces during this portion of the FTP cycle. To
exemplify the real world disturbance rejection performances of
the two controllers, a region of data has been highlighted in the
lower left plot of Fig. 6. A gear shift occurs at the first part of
this region introducing a significant dynamic disturbance. Both
controllers are able to recover from this type of disturbance, but
the AFR switching period controller produces lower peak EQR
errors. Compared to the production controller, the variance in
the pre-catalyst EQR achieved by the AFR switching period
controller was also reduced by a factor of 1.48 for this span of
events. After the disturbance converges to a constant value, the
AFR switching period controller is able to rapidly converge to
the reference dither signal. The steady-state performance of the
AFR switching period controller is further highlighted in the
lower right plot of Fig. 6.
V. CONCLUSION
The switching period control architecture presented in this
paper extracts amplitude information from a binary EGO sensor
by analyzing the switching period. With this amplitude informa-
tion, both steady-state and transient AFR errors can be rapidly
rejected with a minimum amount of overshoot. More impor-
tantly, these robust performance benefits have been analytically
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013
proven. For all bounded disturbances, an AFR switching pe-
riod control system remains stable. Additionally, the maximum
number of events between output switches is at worst bounded
by an affine function of the maximum disturbance magnitude.
As the dynamics of a disturbance decay, the AFR trajectory
asymptotically approaches a desired dither signal. Moreover,
this tracking performance is achieved without relying on an es-
timate of the plant delay other than the maximum plant delay
bound. The stability analysis presented in this paper also pro-
vides guidelines for choosing the amplitude and period of the
dither signal as well as the early and late switching control gains.
The bulk of AFR controllers which have appeared in open
literature strive to control the average AFR but allow for un-
controlled oscillations. With a switching period controller, how-
ever, the actual AFR trajectory is controlled. This additional
level of control helps to ensure that the conversion efficiency
of the TWC is maximized. In the next iteration of this work, a
corresponding post-catalyst AFR controller is being developed.
It has been shown in previous studies that the period and ampli-
tude of periodic oscillations around stoichiometry have a strong
influence on the conversion efficiency of a TWC. As shown in
the stability theorems, the disturbance rejection performance is
maximized when the period of the dither signal is minimized;
however, the optimal dither period in terms of tailpipe-out emis-
sion may be different. In future work, the choice of the dither
signal with respect to emission performance will be studied.
APPENDIX A
PROOF OF THEOREM 3.1
First it should be noted that the two disturbance trajectory
bounds are reasonable and would be satisfied for any properly
calibrated set of air and fuel estimation algorithms. When the
controller is first activated, after the system has reached its nom-
inal operating temperature, the late switching compensator takes
action until the output switches. Let represent the event
when first changes sign and represent the event when
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES 643

Fig. 6. EQR response comparison over a FTP-72 drive cycle.

the first EGO switch occurs. These two events can be related to . Therefore, the change in over this event span
each other with simplifies to

(29)

Until the first EGO switch occurs, the control law can be rep- (33)
resented with
Using the disturbance rate of change bound, the EQR error can
(30) be bounded by

. Consider the EQR system model described

in (8). The change in over the span of events can be (34)
described with and

(35)
.
If such that
(31)
(36)
Because the dither signal is periodic
, then the system will converge to the
(32) origin monotonically (with respect to a time step of )
644 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013

during this time frame. For this to occur, the late switching con- If , then the system could potentially continue to
trol action must overpower the effect of any disturbance (high drift away from the origin even after the late switching compen-
gain feedback). The control input must satisfy sator activates. Under the worst case scenario, the disturbance
could continue to grow until it reaches either its upper or lower
(37) maximum bound. Once this bound is reached, however, the late
switching compensator will force the system back to the origin.
. Comparing this condition to the con- At the instance in which the late switching compensator acti-
trol law described in (30), it is clear that monotonic conver- vates, the disturbance is not more than away from its
gence with respect to a time step of can be guaranteed maximum magnitude bound, and the system can drift away from
when the late switching control gain is larger than the max- the origin at a maximum rate of . Combining these
imum rate of change of the disturbance (i.e., ). When observations, the maximum drift error must be bounded
, the disturbance can change faster than the controller by
can compensate. Because the magnitude of the disturbance is
bounded by , the disturbance magnitude cannot increase (43)
indefinitely. Even though the system may non-monotonically
converge to the origin, the controller ensures that the system
It should be noted that when , the drift error term is
reaches the origin. The maximum number of events required to
always zero.
reach the origin can be bounded by
The maximum total error is therefore the summation
if of the overshoot error bound, the accumulated error bound, the
(38) dither contribution bound and the drift error bound as in
otherwise
(44)
where .
Regardless of the size of the late switching control gain, the where could be either due to the late switching compensator
transport delays which characterize the system will cause the or the early switching compensator. Because of the time varying
late switching compensator to overshoot stoichiometry . nature of the disturbance, the corrective action made by the early
Under the worst case scenario, the effect of the applied control switching compensator could be in the wrong direction. The
action will appear in the output after events. The magni- overshoot error made by the early switching compensator
tude of the maximum overshoot caused by the late switching is therefore bounded by
compensator must, therefore, satisfy
(45)
(39)
The value of is simply the maximum of the two overshoot
After reaching the origin, the late switching compensator will errors or
start acting if the output has not switched after
events. During this time, the disturbance could be forcing (46)
the system away from the origin at a maximum rate of .
Defining as Based on this analysis, the maximum time interval between
EGO switches can also be bounded. The plant delay, the wait
(40) period before the late switching control activates and the time
required to eliminate the maximum error all affect this bound.
Because the size of the maximum error depends on whether
is it clear that before the late switching compensator activates, , the maximum number of events between output
the system can accumulate an error as large as provided switches also depends on this condition. When , the
. If is used to represent the maximum error maximum error can be eliminated at a minimum rate of
that can accumulate before the late switching compensator . Conversely when , the disturbance can
activates, then must therefore satisfy change by as much as thereby increasing the time re-
quired to eliminate the error to . The value of
(41)
is therefore
An error this large can only be accumulated after
events without switching. The dither also can cause the system (47)
to move away from the origin. If the sign of changes on event
, then the maximum contribution from the dither de- if and
pends on the value of the dither signal at the event according to
(48)
(42)
otherwise. Therefore, all trajectories converge to the set
Since the dither can take a maximum value of , this expression in finite time and subsequently remain inside
can be bounded from above by . this set.
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES 645

APPENDIX B the sign of cannot change when so

PROOF OF THEOREM 3.2 .
Theorem 3.2 can be directly derived from (38), (44), and (47) Knowing that the maximum overshoot contribution from the
for the case when and . For a constant dither is at most , the maximum total error can now be
disturbance, the drift error, the accrued error and the overshoot bounded by
error caused by the early switching compensator are all zero.
The maximum number of events required to reach the origin is (59)
therefore bounded by
Although the late switching compensator can cause a peak over-
(49) shoot error as large as , only the contribution of the
integral part of the controller is maintained. The maximum sus-
tained overshoot error caused by the late switching com-
Likewise, the maximum total error is
pensator is bounded by
(50)
(60)
and the maximum number of events between output switches
once the origin is reached is bounded by Theorem 3.2 already guarantees that the origin will be
reached in finite time. If the closed-loop controller were de-
(51) activated after the first EGO switch at event , then
such that

(61)
APPENDIX C
PROOF OF THEOREM 3.3 If the peak overshoot caused by the switching period controller
is less than the dither amplitude, then the periodic dither compo-
To prove this theorem, it will first be shown that all trajecto-
nent alone will cause another EGO switch and this switch would
ries of the system enter and remain in the invariant set
occur after no more than events. This condition is met
. Until now, the contribution of the dither has
when
been bounded conservatively by . From (42), it is clear that
the bound on can be reduced to if corresponding
(62)
to a sign change in , the value of the dither signal satisfies

(52) which is always true provided that the constraints in (26) and
(27) are satisfied.
or equivalently The overall governing control law satisfies
(53) (63)
It is sufficient to show that when
so that such that
(54)
(64)
the sign of does not change. Define as the event when
This means that when the AFR switching period controller
(55) is active it will force the system trajectory toward the origin
unless changes sign (the origin was reached) between events
Using as a reference, the sign of must not change within the and . The maximum amount of overshoot accrued
interval . This is ensured during this span of events is . One can conclude that with the
when controller active, the next EGO switch event will still occur
within events. Therefore, all trajectories converge to
(56) within finite time and subsequently remain
inside this set.
holds for this interval. Substituting in for the change in , this
Now the local behavior of the system within the set
inequality reduces to
can be analyzed. This local analysis relies on the
assumption that every late switch is followed by an early switch
(57)
and early switch is followed by a late switch. This assumption
is met if the following four conditions hold.
. As long as 1) The complete effect of the control action taken by the late
switching compensator is seen in the output before the next
(58) late EGO switch.
646 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013

2) The control action taken by the early switching compen- The closed-loop system can also be represented by
sator influences the output before the following late EGO
switch. (72)
3) The control action taken by the late switching compensator
which simplifies to
first appears in the output before the following early EGO
switch. (73)
4) The proportional gain of the late switching compensator is
not larger than the minimum sustained overshoot caused Neither the late nor the early switching compensator will take
by the late switching compensator. control action unless the offset error causes a switching period
Although omitted here, it can be shown that all four of these error larger than events. Recall that (15) relates the number
conditions are automatically satisfied when (27) and (28) are of events between output switches to the average offset error.
true. For the closed-loop system, the sustained error, rather than the
Consider a new time scale represented by the time index average error, dictates the number of events between output
that increments every early EGO switch. With this reference, switches. The relative lateness of a late EGO switch can be re-
the order of these corrections is late, then early. For readability, lated to the sustained error using
each variable in this time scale is distinguished with an overline.
The state variable represents the sustained error which is equal (74)
to the sum of the constant disturbance and the value held in
the integrator of the controller. This analysis is only valid for
trajectories inside the set . which simplifies to
In the new time scale, the state equation is simply
(75)
(65)
Define the relative earliness of an EGO switch as
where is the combined integral contributions from the early
and late switching compensators. The initial conditions for this (76)
time scale are dependent on the sustained overshoot caused by
the late switching compensator according to The instantaneous sustained error can also be related to the rel-
ative earliness of an early EGO switch according to
(66)

Therefore, the set of all initial conditions for is (77)

(67) which simplifies to

Because only the integral contributions affect the sustained (78)

offset error, the control law in this time scale can be represented
as If
(68) (79)
where represents the relative lateness of an output switch in
the manner then either the late or the early switching compensator will take
action depending on the situation; otherwise, neither controller
(69) will act. The system will converge to the invariant set
defined as
identifies when an early switch occurs according to (80)
if
(70) if such that that satisfy
otherwise

and is the value of the sustained offset error when the

early switch occurs. Because of the plant delay, not all of the (81)
late switching compensation affects the measurement before the
early switching occurs. Therefore the value of is between and if that satisfy
and as described by
(82)
(71)
Clearly (82) holds, because neither controller makes any correc-
where . tions when the offset error is this small.
MEYER et al.: AIR-TO-FUEL RATIO SWITCHING FREQUENCY CONTROL FOR GASOLINE ENGINES 647

As long as neither compensator applies control action which and amplitude exactly and an error between the desired and
is larger than , the bounds described in (81) are satisfied. achieved offset that satisfies (25).
For the late switching compensator this means that the following
must be true:

(83) REFERENCES

. The trigonometric relationship containing

[1] D. Hamburg, J. Cook, W. Kaiser, and E. Logothetis, “An engine-dy-
shown in (75) can be bounded by namometer study of the A/F compatibility between a three-way catalyst
and an exhaust gas oxygen sensor,” SAE, Warrendale, NJ, Tech. Rep.
830986, Apr. 1983.
(84) [2] M. Defoort, D. Olsen, and B. Willson, “The effect of air-fuel ratio con-
trol strategies on nitrogen compound formation in three-way catalysts,”
Int. J. Engine Res., vol. 5, pp. 115–122, 2004.
. Since is constrained by (26), it [3] A. Lie, J. Hoebink, and G. Marin, “The effects of oscillatory feeding
follows that of CO and on the performance of a monolithic catalytic converter
of automobile exhaust gas: A modeling study,” Chem. Eng. J., vol. 53,
no. 757, pp. 47–54, 1993.
(85) [4] L. Mianzo, H. Peng, and I. Haskara, “Transient air-fuel ratio pre-
view control of a drive-by-wire internal combustion engine,” in Proc.
Amer. Control Conf., 2001, pp. 2867–2871.
and therefore (83) must hold. [5] J.-M. Kang and J. Grizzle, “Nonlinear control for joint air and fuel
management in a SI engine,” in Proc. Amer. Control Conf., 1999, pp.
By selecting in this manner, the late switching compen- 17–23.
sator will decrease the magnitude of the offset at every time step [6] K. Muske, J. P. Jones, and E. M. Franceschi, “Adaptive analytical
without changing the sign of the error. As a result can be model-based control for SI engine air-fuel ratio,” IEEE Trans. Con-
trol Syst. Technol., vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 763–768, Jul. 2008.
bounded by [7] R. Zope, K. Grigoriadis, J. Mohammadpour, and M. Franchek, “Air-
fuel ratio control of spark ignited engines with TWC using LPV tech-
niques,” in Proc. ASME Dyn. Syst. Control Conf., 2009, pp. 897–903.
(86) [8] R. Zope, J. Mohammadpour, K. Grigoriadis, and M. Franchek, “Ro-
bust fueling strategy for an SI engine model as an linear parameter
varying time-delayed system,” in Proc. Amer. Control Conf., 2010, pp.
The magnitude of the correction made by the early compensator 4634–4639.
is . As a result, system eigenvalues have a lower bound [9] Y.-W. Kim, G. Rizzoni, and V. Utkin, “Automotive engine diagnosis
of and control via nonlinear estimation,” Control Syst. Mag., vol. 18, no.
5, pp. 84–99, Oct. 1998.
[10] M. Won, S. Choi, and J. Hendrick, “Air-to-fuel ratio control of spark-
(87) ignited engines using Gaussian network sliding control,” IEEE Trans.
Control Syst. Technol., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 678–687, Sep. 1998.
[11] S. Wang and D. L. Yu, “A new development of internal combustion
and an upper bound of engine air-fuel ratio control with second-order sliding mode,” J. Dyn.
Syst., Meas., Control, vol. 129, no. 757, pp. 84–99, 2007.
[12] R. Möller, C. Onder, L. Guzzella, M. Votsmeier, and J. Gieshoff, “Anal-
(88) ysis of a kinetic model describing the dynamic operation of a three-way
catalyst,” Appl. Catalysis B: Environmental, vol. 70, pp. 269–275, Jan.
2007.
. [13] J. C. P. Jones and R. A. Jackson, “Potential and pitfalls in the use of
dual exhaust gas oxygen sensors for three-way catalyst monitoring and
In summary, as long as satisfies (26) and satis- control,” Proc. Inst. Mechan. Eng. D, J. Automobile Eng., vol. 217, pp.
fies (27), all trajectories of the original system converge to the 475–488, 2003.
[14] A. Vosz, S. Midlam-Mohler, Y. Guezennec, and S. Yurkovich, “Ex-
invariant set within a finite number of perimental investigation of switching oxygen sensor behavior due to
events as bounded by (49). Once inside the invariant set exhaust gas effects,” in Proc. Int. Mechan. Eng. Congr. Expo., 2006,
, the EGO sensor will switch twice every dither pe- pp. 381–388.
[15] J. Meyer, S. Yurkovich, and S. Middlam-Mohler, “Architectures for
riod (one late switch and one early switch) as long as the period phase variation compensation in AFR control,” in Proc. Amer. Control
of the dither signal satisfies (27) and the late switching propor- Conf., 2010, pp. 1447–1452.
tional gain satisfies (28). The combined effect of the disturbance [16] S. Liu, K. Dudek, and R. Shafto, “A phase and frequency locking loop
for engine air-fuel ratio control,” in Proc. Amer. Control Conf., 2008,
and the integral compensation one event prior to the late EGO pp. 326–330.
switch strictly decreases as long as the EQR offset has a magni- [17] J. Meyer, S. Rajagopalan, S. Midlam-Mohler, S. Yurkovich, and Y.
tude larger than . When the offset is equal to or less than , the Guezennec, “Application of an exhaust geometry based delay predic-
tion model to internal combustion engines,” in Proc. Dyn. Syst. Control
offset error remains constant . Therefore the offset error Conf., 2009, pp. 557–563.
converges to the invariant set . Inside this set, the system [18] C. F. Aquino, “Transient A/F control characteristics of a 5 liter central
trajectory simplifies from (8) to fuel injection engine,” SAE, Warrendale, PA, Tech. Rep. 810494, 1981.
[19] E. Curtis, C. Aquino, and D. Trumpy, “A new port and cylinder wall
wetting model to predict transient air/fuel excursions in a port fuel in-
(89) jected engine,” presented at the Int. Spring Fuels Lubrications Meeting,
Dearborn, MI, 1996, 961186.
[20] J. Meyer, S. Yurkovich, and S. Middlam-Mohler, “A model based esti-
where and . Therefore, the EQR of the mator for cylinder specific air-to-fuel ratio corrections,” ASME J. Dyn.
combustion mixture reproduces the dither signal in frequency Syst., Meas. Control, vol. 133, no. 3, pp. 1–14, 2011.
648 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAY 2013
Jason Meyer received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. de-
grees in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State
University, Columbus, in 2007, 2008, and 2011, re-
spectively.
He is a Research Associate with the Department
of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State Univer-
sity Center for Automotive Research, Columbus. His
primary expertise is in the field of modeling and con-
trol of dynamic systems. His research is focused on
automotive applications including internal combus-
tion engines, aftertreatment systems and battery en-
ergy storage systems.
Stephen Yurkovich (M’84–F’01) holds the Lewis
Beecherl, Jr., Distinguished Chair in Engineering at
the University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, where
he is Department Head of Systems Engineering. His
research has focused on the theory and applications
of control systems, in numerous application areas.
He has been an author on more than 200 publica-
tions in journals, edited volumes, and conference
proceedings, and has authored and co-authored the
books Control Laboratory (Kendall/Hunt, 1992),
Fuzzy Control (Addison-Wesley-Longman, 1998),
and Control Systems Laboratory (Simon & Schuester, 1998). He was with
Ohio State University for 27 years, from 1984 to 2011, where he was active in
research and educational activities of the Center for Automotive Research.
Prof. Yurkovich was a recipient of the John R. Ragazzini Award in Control
Education of the AACC in 2008, the IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award
in 2000, and an IEEE Third Millennium Medal.
Shawn Midlam-Mohler received the Ph.D. degree
in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State Uni-
versity, Columbus, in 2005.
He is a research Scientist and Adjunct Assistant
Professor with the Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University
Center for Automotive Research, Columbus. His
primary research field is in the area of advanced
automotive powertrain systems with a focus on en-
ergy efficiency and emissions control. Although his
primary focus is in the area of internal combustion
engines, he also has research activities in the area of hybrid electric, electric and
plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Beyond the field of automotive technology, he
has a broader interest in the topic of sustainable energy.