This paper deals with the design of a fixed-structure $H_infty$ power system stabilizer (PSS) by using an iterative linear matrix inequality (LMI) method. The fixed-structure $H_infty$ controller is represented in terms of LMIs with a rank condition. To solve the non-convex rank-constrained LMI problem, a linear penalty function is incorporated into the objective function so that minimizing the penalized objective function subject to LMIs amounts to a convex optimization problem. With an increasing sequence of the penalty parameter, the solution of the penalized optimization problem moves towards the feasible region of the original non-convex problem. The proposed algorithm is, therefore, convergent. Numerical experiments show the practical applicability of the proposed algorithm.