In this paper we study the design of a new two-degree-of-freedom filte
r for the internal model control (IMC) method. The new filter alleviat
es some disadvantages of the standard IMC filter when the IMC method i
s applied to unstable plants that do not have non-minimium-phase zeros
. We show that by employing the new filter, the resulting system has a
flatter frequency response, better stability robustness, and little o
vershoot in the step response. Furthermore, one of its design paramete
rs can be related directly to the closed-loop bandwidth and the other
parameter can be used to control the recovery time after an overshoot
has occurred in the step response. These features are important in the
application of the IMC method to a new approach of adaptive robust co
ntrol. Examples are given in the paper to illustrate the new filter de
sign.