In this paper, we present several case studies illustrating the synthesis of static and dynamic optimal finite L 2 gain anti-windup compensation using linear matrix inequalities, the theoretical underpinnings having been described in [Grimm G, Postlethwaite I, Teel AR, Turner MC, Zaccarian L. Linear matrix inequalities for full and reduced order anti-windup synthesis. American Control Conference, 2001]. The resulting performance is also compared to the well-known IMC-based anti-windup construction both through comparison of the finite L 2 gain and through simulations. The paper shows how superior performance can be obtained using optimal dynamic anti-windup schemes, as compared with optimal static schemes.