Robust Regulation of MIMO systems: A Reformulation of the Internal Model Principle

The internal model principle is a fundamental result stating a necessary and sufficient condition for a stabilizing controller to be robustly regulating. Its classical formulation is given in terms of coprime factorizations and the largest invariant factor of the signal generator which sets unnecessary restrictions for the theory and its applicability. In this article, the internal model principle is formulated using a general factorization approach and the generators of the fractional ideals generated by the elements of the signal generator. The proposed results are related to the classical ones.