Search

This paper considers a scalar continuous-time linear time-invariant system, whose feedback signal is transmitted through a communication network. Such a network has only finite bit rate and suffers from transmission delay which is characterized by both lower and upper delay bounds. The concerned system implements event-triggering strategies, i.e., only when certain events are triggered, the system samples and transmits feedback signals. This paper first derives some lower bounds on the feedback bit rate required to achieve the input-to-state stability under arbitrary event-triggering strategies. Then this paper proposes some constructive methods to design the event-triggering strategy and the controller, and can achieve the input-to-state stability at a bit rate being arbitrarily close to these obtained lower bit rate bounds. Moreover, this paper proves that the stabilizing bit rates under the proposed event-triggering strategies can be strictly lower than the stabilizing bit rate required by any time-triggering strategy. This bit rate superiority comes from the fact that under event triggering, the state information can be freely extracted from the receive time instants of feedback packets without consuming any bit rate. Simulations are done to demonstrate the bit rate superiority of the proposed event-triggering strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies performance preserving event design in nonlinear event-based control systems based on a local $\mathcal{L}_2$ -type performance criterion. Considering a finite gain local $\mathcal{L}_2$ -stable disturbance driven continuous-time system, we propose a triggering mechanism so that the resulting sampled-data system preserves similar disturbance attenuation local $\mathcal{L}_2$ -gain property. The results are applicable to nonlinear systems with exogenous disturbances bounded by some Lipschitz-continuous function of state. It is shown that an exponentially decaying function of time, combined with the proposed triggering condition, extends the interevent periods. Compared to the existing works, this paper analytically estimates the increase in intersampling periods at least for an arbitrary period of time. We also propose a so-called discrete triggering condition to quantitatively find the improvement in interevent times at least for an arbitrary number of triggering iterations. Illustrative examples support the analytically derived results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the certification problem for robust quadratic stability, robust state convergence, and robust quadratic performance of linear systems that exhibit bounded rates of variation in their parameters. We consider both continuous-time (CT) and discrete-time (DT) parameter-varying systems. In this paper, we provide a uniform method for this certification problem in both cases and we show that, contrary to what was claimed previously, the DT case requires a significantly different treatment compared to the existing CT results. In the established uniform approach, quadratic Lyapunov functions, which are affine in the parameter, are used to certify robust stability, robust convergence rates, and robust performance in terms of linear matrix inequality feasibility tests. To exemplify the procedure, we solve the certification problem for $\mathscr {L}_2$ -gain performance both in the CT and the DT cases. A numerical example is given to show that the proposed approach is less conservative than a method with slack variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel tracking predictive controller for constrained nonlinear systems capable to deal with sudden and large variations of a piece-wise constant setpoint signal. The uncertain nature of the setpoint may lead to stability and feasibility issues if a regulation predictive controller based on the stabilizing terminal constraint is used. The tracking model predictive controller presented in this paper extends the MPC for tracking for constrained linear systems to the more complex case of constrained nonlinear systems. The key idea is the addition of an artificial reference as a new decision variable. The considered cost function penalizes the deviation of the predicted trajectory with respect to the artificial reference as well as the distance between the artificial reference and the setpoint. Closed-loop stability and recursive feasibility for any setpoint are guaranteed, thanks to an appropriate terminal cost and extended stabilizing terminal constraint. Also, two simplified formulations are shown: the design based on a terminal equality constraint and the design without terminal constraint. The resulting controller ensures recursive feasibility for any changing setpoint. In the case of unreachable setpoints, asymptotic stability of the optimal reachable setpoint is also proved. The properties of the controller have been tested on a constrained continuous stirred tank reactor simulation model and have been experimentally validated on a four-tanks plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study incremental stability of monotone nonlinear systems through contraction analysis. We provide sufficient conditions for incremental asymptotic stability in terms of the Lie derivatives of differential one-forms or Lie brackets of vector fields. These conditions can be viewed as sum- or max-separable conditions, respectively. For incremental exponential stability, we show that the existence of such separable functions is both necessary and sufficient under standard assumptions for the converse Lyapunov theorem of exponential stability. As a by-product, we also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for exponential stability of positive linear time-varying systems. The results are illustrated through examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a general strategy based on Lyapunov functionals to analyze global asymptotic stability of linear infinite-dimensional systems subject to nonlinear dampings under the assumption that the origin of the system is globally asymptotically stable with a linear damping. To do so, we use the fact that for any linear infinite-dimensional system that is globally exponentially stable, there exists a Lyapunov functional. Then, we derive a Lyapunov functional for the nonlinear system, which is the sum of a Lyapunov functional coming from the linear system and another term that compensates the nonlinearity. Our results are then applied to the linearized Korteweg–de Vries equation and some wave equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an approach for assessing the stability of feedback interconnections where one element is a static slope-restricted nonlinearity and the other element is a linear system. The approach is based on the use of Zames–Falb multipliers where the dynamic portion of the multiplier is chosen as an externally positive noncausal transfer function. By restricting attention to a subset of these multipliers, a set of pure linear matrix inequality conditions is obtained which requires no initial parameterization by the user. A useful byproduct of using externally positive systems is that the results are applicable to nonodd slope restricted nonlinearities, which is not the case for all classes of Zames–Falb multipliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prove that if a homogeneous, continuously differentiable vector field is asymptotically stable, then it admits a Lyapunov function, which is the ratio of two polynomials (i.e., a rational function). We further show that when the vector field is polynomial, the Lyapunov inequalities on both the rational function and its derivative have sum of squares certificates and, hence, such a Lyapunov function can always be found by semidefinite programming. This generalizes the classical fact that an asymptotically stable linear system admits a quadratic Lyapunov function, which satisfies a certain linear matrix inequality. In addition to homogeneous vector fields, the result can be useful for showing local asymptotic stability of nonhomogeneous systems by proving asymptotic stability of their lowest order homogeneous component. This paper also includes some negative results: We show that in absence of homogeneity, globally asymptotically stable polynomial vector fields may fail to admit a global rational Lyapunov function, and in presence of homogeneity, the degree of the numerator of a rational Lyapunov function may need to be arbitrarily high (even for vector fields of fixed degree and dimension). On the other hand, we also give a family of homogeneous polynomial vector fields that admit a low-degree rational Lyapunov function but necessitate polynomial Lyapunov functions of arbitrarily high degree. This shows the potential benefits of working with rational Lyapunov functions, particularly as the ones whose existence we guarantee have structured denominators and are not more expensive to search for than polynomial ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the issues of stability analysis and control synthesis for a class of discrete-time semi-Markov jump linear systems (S-MJLSs). Motivated by the fact that the statistic characteristics of sojourn time and mode transitions are often difficult to acquire in practice, the sojourn-time probability density functions (ST-PDFs) and the transition probabilities (TPs) for jump instants are considered to be partially accessed. The systems under consideration is more general, which not only relaxes the conventional hypothesis on S-MJLSs that all the ST-PDFs and TPs are completely known but also covers systems with completely known and completely unknown ST-PDFs or TPs as special cases. By introducing the upper bound of sojourn time for each system mode, numerically testable stability criteria are established for S-MJLSs with incompletely available ST-PDFs and/or TPs in the sense of mean-square stability (MSS), and the existence conditions of desired stabilizing controller are developed to guarantee the MSS of closed-loop S-MJLSs. The theoretical results are testified by several numerical examples and a practical example of space robot manipulator, to demonstrate the effectiveness, superiority, and applicability of the developed control methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with stability analysis and synthesis for discrete-time linear systems with stochastic dynamics. Equivalence is first proved for three stability notions under some key assumptions on the randomness behind the systems. In particular, we use the assumption that the stochastic process determining the system dynamics is independent and identically distributed with respect to the discrete time. Then, a Lyapunov inequality condition is derived for stability in a necessary and sufficient sense. Although our Lyapunov inequality will involve decision variables contained in the expectation operation, an idea is provided to solve it as a standard linear matrix inequality; the idea also plays an important role in state feedback synthesis based on the Lyapunov inequality. Motivating numerical examples are further discussed as an application of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the stability and $L_2$ -gain properties of linear impulsive delay systems with delayed impulses are studied. Commonly employed techniques, in which the delayed impulses are treated using Newton–Leibniz formula, may not be applicable to $L_2$ -gain analysis, since they make the disturbance input appear in the impulse part. In order to circumvent the difficulty, we first augment the considered system to a time-delay system with switching nondelayed impulses. Due to the absence of delayed impulses, this new approach has advantages in constructing Lyapunov functions and handling the effects of impulse delays on the system performance. Switching-based time-dependent Lyapunov functions are introduced to deal with the resultant switching impulses of the augmented system. Sufficient conditions for exponential stability and $L_2$ -gain properties are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the new approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the internally positive representation (IPR) of linear coupled differential-difference systems with time-varying delays. Then, a stability analysis is conducted on this class of systems: Relying on results established under positivity assumptions, the IPR technique leads to a novel sufficient condition for the delay-independent asymptotic stability of coupled differential-difference systems that holds for not necessarily positive systems. As a consequence, an analogous stability condition for neutral-type equations with time-varying delays is also obtained. The results are discussed and favorably compared to similar conditions proposed in the literature, and finally validated by means of numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies event-based control of nonlinear systems with state quantization. Two configurations of the event-based quantized controller are considered: Quantization after sampling and quantization before sampling. The considered quantizer is assumed to have a finite quantization range. With input-to-state stability (ISS) tools, new event-triggering, and dynamic quantization mechanisms are designed to deal with the interaction of the quantizer and the sampler. For both of the configurations, infinitely fast sampling, and in particular the Zeno phenomenon, is avoided. And the system state asymptotically converges to the origin, if a growth condition is satisfied by the ISS gain of the controlled system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a time-varying observer for a linear continuous-time plant with asynchronous sampled measurements is proposed. The observer is contextualized in the hybrid systems framework providing an elegant setting for the proposed solution. In particular, some theoretical tools are provided, in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), certifying asymptotic stability of a certain compact set where the estimation error is zero. We consider sampled asynchronous measurements that occur at arbitrary times in a certain window with an upper and lower bound. The design procedure, that we propose for the selection of the time-varying gain, is based on a constructive algorithm that is guaranteed to find a solution to an infinite-dimensional LMI whenever a feasible solution exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study feedback control for a discrete-time integrator with unitary delay in the presence of quantization both in the control action and in the measurement of the controlled variable. In some applications the quantization effects can be neglected, but when high precision is needed, they have to be explicitly accounted for in control design. In this paper, we propose a switched control solution for minimizing the effect of quantization of both the control and controlled variables for the considered system, that is quite common in the computing systems domain, for example, in thread scheduling, clock synchronization, and resource allocation. We show that the switched solution outperforms the one without switching, designed by neglecting quantization, and analyze necessary and sufficient conditions for the controlled system to exhibit periodic solutions in the presence of an additive constant disturbance affecting the control input. Simulation results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the stabilization of linear systems with process noise under packet drops between the sensor and the controller. Our aim is to ensure exponential convergence of the second moment of the plant state to a given bound in finite time. Motivated by considerations about the efficient use of the available resources, we adopt an event-triggering approach to design the transmission policy. In our design, the sensor's decision to transmit or not is based on an online evaluation of whether the control objective may be violated in the future. The resulting event-triggering policy is hence specifically tailored to the control objective. We formally establish that the proposed event-triggering policy meets the desired objective and quantify its efficiency by providing an upper bound on the fraction of expected number of transmissions in an infinite time interval. Simulations for scalar and vector systems illustrate the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this note, we clarify the statement given in the above paper, claiming that the condition for state feedback stabilisation tends to necessity. Actually, it is possible to find examples for which the above-mentioned condition introduces a very weak conservatism and hence is not necessary. The source of the conservatism has been identified. Furthermore, we also realized that the condition could be substantially improved in terms of computation time. Therefore both the analysis and synthesis conditions are improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the notion of common zeroing-output systems (CZOS) to analyze the stability of switched systems. The concept of CZOS allows one to verify weak zero-state detectability. It characterizes a common behavior of any individual subsystem when the output signal for each subsystem is “approaching” zero. Heuristically speaking, it removes the effect of switching behavior, and thus enables one to analyze stability properties in systems with complex switching signals. With the help of CZOS, the Krasovskii–LaSalle theorem can be extended to switched nonlinear time-varying systems with both arbitrary switching and more general restricted switching cases. For switched nonlinear time-invariant systems, the needed detectability condition is further simplified, leading to several new stability results. Particularly, when a switched linear time-invariant system is considered, it is possible to generate a recursive method, which combines a Krasovskii–LaSalle result and a nested Matrosov result, to find a CZOS if it exists. The power of the proposed CZOS is demonstrated by consensus problems in literature to obtain a stronger convergence result with weaker conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with $L_1$-stochastic stability and $L_1$-gain performance analysis of a continuous-time positive Markov jump linear system with a time-delay. By constructing a novel linear co-positive stochastic Lyapunov functional based on the positivity of the system, and characterizing the system equation of the mathematical expectation of the markovianized states, some necessary and sufficient delay-dependent conditions for $L_1$-stochastic stability and $L_1$-gain performance are presented in terms of linear programming. A numerical example is provided for showing the effectiveness of the obtained conditions, especially for exploring and revealing both the negative effect and the positive effect of the time-delay on stochastic stability of the positive Markov jump linear system with a time-delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the use of relaxed logarithmic barrier functions in the context of linear model predictive control. We present results that allow to guarantee asymptotic stability of the corresponding closed-loop system, and discuss further properties like performance and constraint satisfaction in dependence of the underlying relaxation. The proposed stabilizing MPC schemes are not necessarily based on an explicit terminal set or state constraint and allow to characterize the stabilizing control input sequence as the minimizer of a globally defined, continuously differentiable, and strongly convex function. The results are illustrated by means of a numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the transient dynamics of one dimensional flocks, platoons, i.e., a finite collection of identical vehicles moving on the line, with a single leader with independent motion. We show for a class of platoon control laws that if the information flow is asymmetric then a motion change of the leader will cause system transients with amplitudes that grow at an exponential rate as the length of the platoon increases. With suitable choice of the control parameters the system is asymptotically stable and in steady state all vehicles move at the same velocity as the leader and at the required separation. When the leader changes velocity, over very long time scales the vehicles in the platoon tend to the steady state dictated by the leader's new velocity. The transient dynamics in the intermediary regime can however appear quite unstable, where the trailing vehicle can undergo oscillatory motion with amplitudes that grow exponentially large with the number of cars N in the platoon, or may be irresponsive over an exponentially long time to the change in the motion of the leader. In this paper we prove that if the control law is asymmetric then such transient errors, measured in terms of displacement between the leader and the trailing car, grow at an exponential rate in N, the length of the platoon. This contrasts sharply with the symmetric (bidirectional) case when such transient errors grow only linearly in the length of the platoon, the theoretical minimum for decentralized linear time-invariant platoon control systems with a constant vehicle spacing policy. These results suggest that symmetry of the information flow is an important design parameter for safe control laws for platoons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic Model Predictive Controllers, consisting of an economic criterion as stage cost for the dynamic regulation problem, have shown to improve the economic performance of the controlled plant, as well as to ensure stability of the economic setpoint. However, throughout the operation of the plant, economic criteria are usually subject to frequent changes, due to variations of prices, costs, production demand, market fluctuations, reconciled data, disturbances, etc. A different economic criterion determines a change of the optimal operation point and this may cause a loss of feasibility and/or stability. In this paper a stabilizing economic MPC for changing economic criterion for linear prediction models is presented. The proposed controller always ensures feasibility for any given economic criterion, thanks to the particular choice of the terminal ingredients. Asymptotic stability is also proved, providing a Lyapunov function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a dynamic controller structure and a systematic design procedure for stabilizing discrete-time hybrid systems. The proposed approach is based on the concept of control Lyapunov functions (CLFs), which, when available, can be used to design a stabilizing state-feedback control law. In general, the construction of a CLF for hybrid dynamical systems involving both continuous and discrete states is extremely complicated, especially in the presence of non-trivial discrete dynamics. Therefore, we introduce the novel concept of a hybrid control Lyapunov function, which allows the compositional design of a discrete and a continuous part of the CLF, and we formally prove that the existence of a hybrid CLF guarantees the existence of a classical CLF. A constructive procedure is provided to synthesize a hybrid CLF, by expanding the dynamics of the hybrid system with a specific controller dynamics. We show that this synthesis procedure leads to a dynamic controller that can be implemented by a receding horizon control strategy, and that the associated optimization problem is numerically tractable for a fairly general class of hybrid systems, useful in real world applications. Compared to classical hybrid receding horizon control algorithms, the proposed approach typically requires a shorter prediction horizon to guarantee asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system, which yields a reduction of the computational burden, as illustrated through two examples. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper develops a comprehensive stability analysis framework for general classes of continuous-time power control algorithms under heterogeneous time-varying delays. Our first set of results establish global asymptotic stability of power control laws involving two-sided scalable interference functions, and include earlier work on standard interference functions as a special case. We then consider contractive interference functions and demonstrate that the associated continuous-time power control laws always have unique fixed points which are exponentially stable, even under bounded heterogeneous time-varying delays. For this class of interference functions, we present explicit bounds on the decay rate that allow us to quantify the impact of delays on the convergence time of the algorithm. When interference functions are linear, we also prove that contractivity is necessary and sufficient for exponential stability of continuous-time power control algorithms with time-varying delays. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the validity of our theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the derivation of a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme for multimodal piecewise-affine (PWA) and piecewise-linear systems. The control allows the plant to track asymptotically the states of a multimodal piecewise affine (or smooth) reference model. The reference model can be characterized by a number and geometry of phase space regions that can be entirely different from those of the plant. Numerical simulations on a set of representative examples confirm the theoretical derivation and proof of stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first establish a stability result for a class of linear switched systems involving Kronecker product. The problem is interesting in that the system matrix does not have to be Hurwitz at any time instant. This class of linear switched systems arises in the control of multi-agent systems under switching network topology. As applications of this stability result, we give the solvability conditions for both the leaderless consensus problem and the leader-following consensus problem for general marginally stable linear multi-agent systems under switching network topology. In contrast with some existing results, our results only assume that the dynamic graph is uniformly connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the class of discrete-time switched systems switching between p autonomous positive subsystems. First, sufficient conditions for testing stability, based on the existence of special classes of common Lyapunov functions, are investigated, and these conditions are mutually related, thus proving that if a linear copositive common Lyapunov function can be found, then a quadratic positive definite common function can be found, too, and this latter, in turn, ensures the existence of a quadratic copositive common function. Secondly, stabilizability is introduced and characterized. It is shown that if these systems are stabilizable, they can be stabilized by means of a periodic switching sequence, which asymptotically drives to zero every positive initial state. Conditions for the existence of state-dependent stabilizing switching laws, based on the values of a copositive (linear/quadratic) Lyapunov function, are investigated and mutually related, too. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this note is to correct some statements and numerical results in the above paper. In particular, we will show that the stability criterion in refid="ref1"/ is equivalent to that in refid="ref2"/, rather than less conservative as claimed, and the criterion in refid="ref2"/ does apply to the numerical example suggested in refid="ref1"/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stability proofs of nonlinear congestion control systems under heterogeneous feedback delays are usually difficult and involve a fair amount of effort. In this paper, we show that there exist a class of congestion control methods that admit very simple proofs of asymptotic stability and allow control equations to be delay-independent. This is in contrast to most previous work, which requires that each flow (and some- times each router) adapt its control-loop constants based on the feedback delay and/or the length of the corresponding end-to-end path. Our new congestion control method, which we call Max-Mm Kelly Control (MKC), builds upon Kelly's original work in [3] and allows end-flows to be stable and fair regardless of network feedback delays or the number of hops in their end-to-end paths. Using basic matrix algebra and discrete control theory, we show MKC's local asymptotic stability under heterogeneous, directional feedback delays. We also offer a simple proof of its global asymptotic stability assuming constant feedback delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]