  We address stabilization of linear time-invariant (LTI), single-input
single-output (SISO) systems in the Laplace domain, with a stable controller in
a single feedback loop. Such stabilization is called strong. Plants that
satisfy a parity interlacing property are known to be strongly stabilizable.
Finding such controllers is a well known difficult problem. Existing general
methods are based on either manual search or a clever use of Nevanlinna-Pick
interpolation with polynomials of possibly high integer order. Here we present
a new, simple, and general method for strongly stabilizing systems of relative
degree less than 3. We call our method Real to Integers (RTI). Our theoretical
contributions constitute proposing the functional form used, which involves a
product of several terms of the form $\displaystyle \left ( \frac{s+a}{s+b}
\right )^m$, showing that real $m$'s will arise whenever the plant is strongly
stabilizable, and proving that integer $m$'s can be obtained by continuously
varying free parameters (i.e., the $a$'s and $b$'s). Our practical
contributions include demonstrating a simple way, based on a trigonometric
trick, to adjust the fractional powers until they take reasonable integer
values. We include brief but necessary associated discussion to make the paper
accessible to a broad audience. We also present ten numerical examples of
successful control design with varying levels of difficulty, including plants
whose transfer functions have relative degrees of 0, 1 or 2; and with right
half plane zeros of multiplicity possibly exceeding one.
