This paper gives two alternative off-line synthesis approaches to robust model predictive control (RMPC) for systems with polytopic description. In each approach, a sequence of explicit control laws that correspond to a sequence of nested asymptotically invariant ellipsoids are constructed off-line. In order to accommodate a wider class of systems, nominal performance cost is chosen to substitute the "worst-case" one in an existing technique. In the design of control law for a larger ellipsoid, the second approach further incorporates the knowledge of control laws associated with all smaller ellipsoids, so as to further improve feasibility and optimality. The effectiveness of the alternative approaches is illustrated by a simulation example. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.