Abstract
Plant uncertainty is one of the major contributing factors that could affect the performance as well as stability of active noise control (ANC) systems. Plant uncertainty may be caused by either the errors in modeling, computation, and measurement, or the perturbations in physical conditions. These factors lead to deviations of the plant from the nominal model, which will in turn affect the robustness of the control system. In this paper, the effects due to changes in physical conditions on the ANC system are investigated. The analysis is carded out in terms of performance and robustness by using a general framework of the H(∞) robust control theory. The size of plant uncertainty is estimated according to the infinity norm of the perturbations to physical conditions, which provides useful information for subsequent controller design that accommodates both performance and stability in an optimal and robust manner. The guidelines for designing the ANC systems with reference to plant uncertainties are also addressed.