Transient Performance of MPC for Tracking Without Terminal Constraints

Model predictive control (MPC) for tracking is a recently introduced approach, which extends standard MPC formulations by incorporating an artificial reference as an additional optimization variable, in order to track external and potentially time-varying references. In this letter, we analyze the performance of such an MPC for tracking scheme without a terminal cost and terminal constraints. We derive a transient performance estimate, i.e., a bound on the closed-loop performance over an arbitrary time interval, yielding insights on how to select the scheme’s parameters for performance. Furthermore, we show that in the asymptotic case, where the prediction horizon and observed time interval tend to infinity, the closed-loop solution of MPC for tracking recovers the infinite horizon optimal solution.