MICROCONTROLLER-BASED REAL-TIME DIGITAL-CONTROL OF SLOW PROCESSES WITH DEAD-TIME

Human blood glucose metabolism is viewed by biomedical engineers as a slow nonlinear system whose structure and parameters are not known exa ctly. A significant time delay is usually involved in the measurement process of glucose concentration. This paper introduces the real-time digital control of such a process. A three term microcontroller is emp loyed in real-time processing of the glucoregulatory system. The coeff icients of this controller are optimized using a recently developed cr iterion to place the closed-loop poles at desired locations. The simul ation results show that the input waveform is relatively steady during the control process, and the microcontroller employed is practicable as well as providing satisfactory in vivo blood glucose regulation.