Multivariable control of nighttime temperature and humidity in greenhouses combining heating and dehumidification

This work presents a multivariable control strategy to regulate nighttime temperature and relative humidity inside a greenhouse, using a pipe heating system and a dehumidification system. The greenhouse is modeled as a two-input two-output (TITO) process with a system identification methodology to calculate low-order linear models. Proportional-integral (PI) controllers with anti-windup are used, and an inverted decoupling scheme is adopted. The strategy was tested in simulation with real data. Results suggest that it is attractive for real implementation and show for the first time that the use of dehumidification systems can be applied as part of a combined control strategy. Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC- ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)