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Event-Triggered Real-Time Scheduling of Stabilizing
Control Tasks
Paulo Tabuada, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractIn this note, we revisit the problem of scheduling stabilizing
control tasks on embedded processors. We start from the paradigm that areal-time scheduler could be regarded as a feedback controller that decides
which task is executed at anygiven instant. This controller hasfor objectiveguaranteeing that (control unrelated) software tasks meet their deadlinesand that stabilizing control tasks asymptotically stabilize the plant. We in-vestigate a simple event-triggered scheduler based on this feedback para-digm and show how it leads to guaranteed performance thus relaxing themore traditional periodic execution requirements.
Index TermsEvent-triggered, input-to-state stability, real-time sched-uling.
I. INTRODUCTION
Small embedded microprocessors are quickly becoming an essen-
tial part of the most diverse applications. A particularly interesting ex-
ample are physically distributed sensor/actuator networks responsiblefor collecting and processing information, and to react to this infor-
mation through actuation. The embedded microprocessors forming the
computational core of these networks are required to execute a variety
of tasks comprising the relay of information packets in multihop com-
munication schemes, monitoring physical quantities, and computation
of feedback control laws. Since we are dealing with resource-limited
microprocessors, it becomes important to assess to what extent we can
increase the functionality of these embedded devices through novel
real-time scheduling algorithms based on event-triggered rather than
time-triggered execution of control tasks.
We investigate in this note a very simple event-triggered scheduling
algorithm that preempts running tasks to execute thecontrol task when-
ever a certain error becomes large when compared with the state norm.
This idea is an adaptation to the scheduling context of several tech-
niques used to study problems of control under communication con-
straints [6], [11], [18]. We take explicitly into account the response
time of the control task and show that the proposed scheduling policy
guarantees semi-global asymptotical stability. We also show existence
of a minimal time between consecutive executions of the control task
under the proposed event-triggered scheduling policy. This time, when
regarded as a lower bound on release times of the control task, suggests
that periodic implementations of control tasks can be relaxed to more
flexible aperiodic or event-triggered real-time implementations while
guaranteeing desired levels of performance. The proposed approach is
illustrated with simulation results.
Real-time scheduling of control tasks has received renewed interest
from the academic community in the past years [2], [5], [8][10], [14],[22]. Common to all these approaches, that followed from the initial
work of Seto and co-authors [23], is the underlying principle that better
control performanceis achievedby providingmore CPUtimeto control
tasks. This can be accomplished in two different ways: letting control
Manuscript received May 30, 2006; revised May 17, 2007. Recommendedby Associate Editor J. Hespanha. This research was partially supported by theNational Science Foundation EHS Award 0712502.
The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Uni-versity of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA (e-mail:[email protected]; URL: http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~ tabuada).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this note are available onlineat http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAC.2007.904277
tasks run for longer amounts of time using anytime implementations or
model predictive controllers; or by scheduling control tasks more fre-
quently. All these approaches assume the existence of a performance
criterion for the control task such as a cost function used to design an
optimal linear quadratic regulator. Scheduling strategies are then ob-
tained through optimization algorithms seeking to determine schedules
maximizing the performance criterion. The work presented in this note
does not resort to optimization and does not require a performance cri-terion. Instead, the decision to execute the control task is determined
by a feedback mechanism based on the state of the plant.
The above described work focused on optimizing schedules and
sampling rates while leaving controllers unchanged. A further gener-
alization of such ideas appears in [20], [21] where the optimization
process also changes the feedback controllers in order to enforce
stability of the controlled processes and schedulability. Close at the
technical level, although addressing very different problems, is the
recent work on stabilization under communication constraints [6],
[7], [11], [15], [18], [19]. All these approaches are concerned with
the stabilization of continuous systems under reduced communication
and the employed techniques share with some of the techniques
described in this note a common ancestor: the perturbation approach
to stability analysis of control systems, described, for example, in [13].
Similar techniques have also been used in [16] and [27] to show how
sample-and-hold implementations of stabilizing controllers guarantee
stability under sufficiently fast periodic executions. Unfortunately,
these results are either nonconstructive or rely on assumptions much
stronger than those used in this note. Finally, we would like to refer
the reader to [1] where some advantages of event-driven control over
time-driven control are presented in a stochastic setting. A preliminary
version of the results presented in this note was reported in [25].
II. NOTATION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT
A. Notation
We shall use the notation j x j to denote the Euclidean norm of an
element x 2 I R n . Given matrices A and B , [ A j B ] denotes the matrix
formed by the columns of matrix A followed by the columns of matrix
B . A function f : I R n ! I R m is said to be Lipschitz continuous on
compacts if for every compact set S I R n there exists a constant
L > 0 such that j f ( x ) 0 f ( y ) j L j x 0 y j for every x ; y 2 S . A
continuous function : [ 0 ; a [ ! I R +0
, a > 0 , is said to be of class K
if it is strictly increasing and ( 0 ) = 0 . It is said to be of class K1
if
a = 1 and ( r ) ! 1 as r ! 1 .
B. Problem Statement
We consider a control system
_x = f ( x ; u ) ; x 2 I R
n
; u 2 I R
m
(1)
for which a feedback controller
u = k ( x )
(2)
has been designed rendering the closed-loop system
_x = f ( x ; k ( x + e ) ) : (3)
Input-to-State Stable (ISS) with respect to measurement errors e 2
I R
n . We shall not need the definition 1 of ISS in this note but rather
the following characterization.
1
See, for example, [24] for an introduction to ISS and related notions.
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Definition II.1: A smooth function V : I R n ! I R +0
is said to be
an ISS Lyapunov function for the closed-loop system (3) if there exist
class K1
functions ; ; and satisfying
( j x j ) V ( x ) ( j x j ) (4)
@ V
@ x
f ( x ; k ( x + e ) ) 0 ( j x j ) + ( j e j ) : (5)
Closed-loop system (3) is said to be ISS with respect to measurement
errorse I R
n if there exists an ISS Lyapunov function for (3).
The implementation of the feedback law (2) on an embedded pro-
cessor is typically done by sampling the state at time instants
t
0
; t
1
; t
2
; t
3
; t
4
. . .
computing u ( ti
) = k ( x ( t
i
) ) and updating the actuator values at time
instants
t
0
+ 1 ; t
1
+ 1 ; t
2
+ 1 ; t
3
+ 1 ; t
4
+ 1 ; . . .
where 1 0 represents the time required to read the state from the
sensors, compute the control law and update the actuators. This means
that to a sequence of measurements
x ( t
0
) ; x ( t
1
) ; x ( t
2
) ; x ( t
3
) ; x ( t
4
) ; . . .
there corresponds a sequence of actuation updates
u ( t
0
+ 1 ) ; u ( t
1
+ 1 ) ; u ( t
2
+ 1 ) ; u ( t
3
+ 1 ) ; u ( t
4
+ 1 ) ; . . . :
Between actuator updates the input valueu
is held constant according
to
t [ t
i
+ 1 ; t
i + 1
+ 1 [ = ) u ( t ) = u ( t
i
+ 1 ) : (6)
Furthermore, the sequence of times t0
; t
1
; t
2
; t
3
; t
4
; . . . is typically pe-
riodic meaning thatt
i + 1
0 t
i
= T
where T > 0 is the period. We can
thus regard the execution of the control task implementing the con-
trol law (2) as being time-triggered. In this note we consider instead
event-triggered executions where the sequence t0
; t
1
; t
2
; t
3
; t
4
. . . of
execution times is no longer periodic neither specified in advance but
rather implicitly defined by an execution rule based on the state of the
plant. To introduce this execution rule we define the measurement error
e to be
t [ t
i
+ 1 ; t
i + 1
+ 1 [ = ) e ( t ) = x ( t
i
) 0 x ( t ) : (7)
We can thus describe the evolution of (1) under the implementation (6)
of control law (2) by
_x = f ( x ; k ( x + e ) )
with e I R n as defined in (7).
Let us first consider the hypothetical case 1 = 0 with the single
purpose of explaining the execution rule. From (5) we see that if we
restrict the error to satisfy
( j e j ) ( j x j ) ; > 0 (8)
the dynamics of V is bounded by
@ V
@ x
f ( x ; k ( x + e ) ) ( 0 ) ( j x j )
thus guaranteeing that V decreases provided that 0 , the control task needs to be executed before the
equality ( j e j ) = ( j x j )
is satisfied in order to account for the delay
1
between measuring the state and updating the actuators.
Although the simple execution rule (9) guarantees global asymptot-
ical stability by construction, there are three important questions that
need to be answered in order to assess the feasibility of this schedulingpolicy.
1) Since theexecution times areonly implicitly defined, canwe guar-
antee that they will not become arbitrarily close resulting in an ac-
cumulation2 point?
2) In the absence of accumulation points, can we compute an esti-
mate of the time elapsed between consecutive executions of the
control task?
3) How can we use the execution rule (9) when there are more tasks
competing for processor time and still guarantee that no deadlines
are missed?
Answering the above questions is the objective of Sections III VI.
III. EXISTENCE OF A LOWER BOUND FOR INTEREXECUTION TIMES
We start immediately with one of the main contributions of this note.
Theorem III.1: Let _x = f ( x ; u ) be a control system and let u =
k ( x ) be a control law renderingthe closed-loopsystem ISSwith respect
to measurement errors. If the following assumptions are satisfied:
1) f : I R n 2 I R m ! I R n is Lipschitz continuous on compacts;
2) k : I R n ! I R m is Lipschitz continuous on compacts;
3) there exists an ISS Lyapunov function V for the closed-loop
system satisfying (5) with 0 1 and Lipschitz continuous on
compacts,
then, for any compact set S I R n containing the origin, there exists
an " > 0 such that for all response times 1 [ 0 ; " ] there exists a time
I R
+ such that for any initial condition in S the inter-execution
timesf t
i
+ 1
0 t
i
g
i 2 I N implicitly defined by the execution rule (9) with 0 is large enough so that S R . Such
always exists since by (4), V is proper or radially unbounded. Set
R is forward invariant for the closed-loop system since the execution
rule (9) guarantees _V 0 . We now define another compact set E by
all the points e I R n satisfying j e j 0 1 ( ( j x j ) ) for all x
R . Since 0 1 and are Lipschitz continuous on compacts, then so is
0 1
( ( j r j ) = )
. LetP
be the Lipschitz constant for the compact setE
so that j 0 1 ( ( j r j ) = ) 0 0 1 ( ( j s j ) = ) j P j r 0 s j . Ifr = e and s =
0 we obtain 0 1 ( ( j e j ) = ) P j e j . Note that by enforcing the more
conservative inequality P j e j j x j we guarantee 0 1 ( ( j e j ) = ) j x j
(which is (8)) so that it suffices to show that the inter-execution times
are bounded for the execution rule P j e j = j x j . As a first step towardsshowing boundedness we note that it follows from Lipschitz continuity
on compacts of f ( x ; u ) and k ( x ) that f ( x ; k ( x + e ) ) is also Lipschitz
continuous on compacts, that is
j f ( r ; k ( r + s ) ) 0 f ( r
; k ( r
+ s
) ) j L j ( r ; s ) 0 ( r
; s
) j
by taking r = x , s = e and r = 0 = e we obtain
j f ( x ; k ( x + e ) ) j L j ( x ; e ) j L j x j + L j e j (10)
when ( x ; e ) R 2 E . Note that R 2 E is forward invariant for the
state as well as the error dynamics. We can now bound the interevent
2In the context of hybrid systems this corresponds to another example of theinfamous Zeno behavior [4].
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times by looking at the dynamics of j e j = j x j
d
d t
j e j
j x j
=
d
d t
( e
T
e )
1 = 2
( x
T
x )
1 = 2
=
( e
T
e )
0 1 = 2
e
T
_e ( x
T
x )
1 = 2
0 ( x
T
x )
0 1 = 2
x
T
_x ( e
T
e )
1 = 2
x
T
x
= 0
e
T
_x
j e k x j
0
x
T
_x
j x k x j
j e j
j x j
j e k _x j
j e k x j
+
j x k _x j
j x k x j
j e j
j x j
= +
j e j
j x j
j _x j
j x j
+
j e j
j x j
L j x j + L j e j
j x j
b y ( 0 )
= L +
j e j
j x j
+
j e j
j x j
:
(11)
If we denotej e j = j x j
byy
we have the estimate_y L ( + y )
2 andwe conclude that y ( t ) ( t ;
0
) where ( t ; 0
) is the solution of_
= L ( + )
2
satisfying ( 0 ; 0 ) = 0 .Assume now that 1 = 0 . Then, the inter-execution times are
bounded by the time it takes for to evolve from 0 to = P , thatis, the inter-execution times are bounded by the solution 2 I R +
of ( ; 0 ) = = P . Since ( ; 0 ) = L = ( L 0 ) we obtain = = ( L + L P ) .
For 1 > 0 we need a more detailed analysis. First, pick satisfying <
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where the inequality follows from @ = @ 0 > 0 , we have
( 1 ) 0 : 4 4 b = j K
T
B
T
P + P B K j = 8
and m
(
Q
)
is the smallest eigenvalue ofQ
. Since b
needs to besmaller that 0.44, we select
= 0 : 0 5
and obtain the execution rule
j e j = 0 : 0 5 j x j . For 1 = 0 : 0 0 5 s and according to Corollary 4.1 we can
select any 0 satisfying 0 : 0 2 3 5 0 0 : 0 4 0 5 . The theoretical value
for the interexecution time corresponding to 0 = 0 : 0 4 is
1 + = 0 : 0 0 5 s + 0 : 0 0 9 s = 0 : 0 4 s
while simulation results for the initial conditions
( x
1
( 0 ) ; x
2
( 0 ) ) = 0 c o s
2
3 0
; 0 s i n
2
3 0
= ; . . . ; 3 0
provided a lower bound of 0 : 0 2 3 7 s .
In Fig. 1 we can see how the error norm never reaches j x j even
though it goes beyond 0 j x j which is used as execution rule. Although
forsmall values of time there is a large gapbetween the maximum value
reached by j e j and j x j , this gap decreases as the state approaches the
origin.
For different values of 0 we obtained the interexecution time es-
timates reported in Table I. We can see that the estimated values, al-
though conservative, do not overestimate the values obtained through
simulation by more than a factor of 3.
VI. COSCHEDULABILITY OF STABILIZING CONTROL TASKS
The lower bound for interexecution times of the control task, pre-
sented in Theorem 3.1, can be used to analyze schedulability of a set
of tasks T = f Ti
g
i 2 I
. We shall assume a preemptive scheduler inwhich the control task has the highest priority and thus cannot be pre-
Fig. 1. Evolution of j e j , j x j and j x j for 1 = 0 : 0 0 5 , = 0 : 0 5 and =0 : 0 4 .
empted by anyother task and is executedwithout delayswhen ( j e j ) =
( j x j ) . Note that timing overheads associated with context switching
can be captured in the proposed framework by suitably enlarging 1 .
We regard execution of the control task as a timing overhead imposed
on the tasksT
i
by the scheduler in the sense thatT
i
may need to be
interrupted to execute the control task. When a set of software tasksT
can be scheduled despite the overhead associated with the control task
we say that T is coschedulable with the control task. Coschedulability
is now ensured by the following sufficient condition where d r e denotes
the smallest integer greater thanr 2 I R
.
Proposition VI.1: Let _x = f ( x ; u ) be a control system, let u =
k ( x ) be a control law renderingthe closed-loopsystem ISSwith respect
to measurement errors and let T = f Ti
g
i 2 I
be a set of tasks with
execution timesf 1
i
g
i 2 I
. If the set of tasksT
is schedulable with new
execution times 1 0i
given by
1
0
i
= 1
i
+
1
i
1
then T is coschedulable with the control task under the execution rule(9).
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TABLE ISIMULATED AND ESTIMATED INTER-EXECUTION TIMES FOR SEVERAL VALUES
OF
Proof: Since the time between executions of the control task
is lower bounded by 1 + , each task Ti
can be interrupted at
most d 1i
= e times. Each interruption will delay the execution of
T
i
by1
units of time resulting in a combined execution time of
1
i
+ d 1
i
= e 1 .
Coschedulability is ensured by the existence of a schedule where the
duration 1i
of each task Ti
has been inflated to 1 0i
in order to accom-
modate the timing overhead imposed by the control task. This result
is a very simple illustration of how the interexecution time can be
used for schedulability analysis of the proposed event-triggered policy.
Much less conservative results can be obtained when more structure is
assumed on the set of tasks T (periodicity for example) and on the
scheduler.
VII. DISCUSSION
A. Real-Time Scheduling Policies for Nonpreemptible Tasks
The simple preemptive scheduling strategy presented in Section VI
relied on the possibility to preempt all but the control task. If there are
other non-premptible tasks and its execution times are small compared
with1
, then the same scheduling strategy can still be used by suit-ably enlarging 1 to account for execution delays. In many, if not most,
situations this assumption may not hold and more elaborate scheduling
strategies are necessary. The results presented in this note are also rele-
vant in this more general context since the lower bound on the interex-
ecution times can be used to construct a timed-automaton model for
the control task. This model can then be composed with models of the
remaining tasks and a scheduler, regarded as a supervisor, can be syn-
thesized by resorting to control and/or game theoretic techniques for
timed automata [3], [12].
B. ISS With Respect to Actuation Errors and Networked Control
Systems
The results presented in this note are based on the assumption thatthe controller to be implemented renders the closed-loop system ISS
with respect to measurement errors. From a theoretical point of view
it is not difficult to see that Theorem 3.1 still holds, mutatis mutantis,
if ISS with respect to actuation errors is assumed in place of ISS with
respect to measurement errors. This is an assumption that can be made
without loss of generality for control affine systems. In this case, the
execution rule would be based on the error e ( t ) = k ( x ( ti
) ) 0 k ( x ( t ) )
which makes this approach uninteresting from the practical point of
view as k ( x ( t ) ) needs to be computed to determine if the control task
computing k ( x ( t ) ) should be executed! Under the ISS with respect to
measurement errors assumption used in this note we only need to com-
putej x ( t
i
) 0 x ( t ) j
andj x ( t ) j
to determine if the control task should
be executed and this can be done in hardware without requiring pro-
cessor time. However, the ISS with respect to actuation errors, doesmake sense in a networked control setting where the shared resource to
be scheduled is not processor time but rather the transmission medium.
Similar ideas have been more or less explicitly explored in [17], [19],
[26].
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank his former colleague Mike Lemmon
at the University of Notre Dame for insightful discussions about someof the issues addressed in this note.
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Positive Controllability Test for Continuous-Time
Linear Systems
Hiroshi Yoshida, Member, IEEE, and Tetsuro Tanaka, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis note presents a method to test the positive controllabilityof a continuous-time linear system. Based on the Jordan canonicalform, thecontrollability of a given system can be reduced to those of its subsystemswith real eigenvalues. Because the dimension of the subsystem is smallerthan that of the given system, the controllability test can be simplified. It is
pointed out that the conditions for a continuous-time system to be positivecontrollable have almost the same expressions as those for a discrete-timesystem.
Index TermsContinuous-time linear system, controllability test,Jordan canonical form, positive control.
I. INTRODUCTION
The concept of controllability of systems was introduced by Kalman
[1], which is a significant and fundamental subject in control system
theory. As for the controllability under positive input, necessary and
sufficient conditions for continuous-time linear systems were obtained
which arise frequently in the practical problems, such as antivibration
control of pendulums system [2], optimal control of economic system
[3], and others [4], [5]. It is very important to test the controllability in
designing systems. But unfortunately the subject of testing the positive
controllability of continuous-time linear systems has not been investi-
gated completely as yet.
On the other hand, the controllability of discrete-time linear systems
with input constraints was also discussed in [6][10]. A necessary and
sufficient condition for single input discrete-time linear systems withpositive input was obtained by Evans et al. [7]. The authors presented
a necessary and sufficient condition for multiple input discrete-time
linear systems to be positive controllable, where a method to test the
positive controllabilitywas proposed [10]. Thepurpose of this note is to
present a method to test the positive controllability of continuous-time
linear systems based on the results of discrete-time linear systems [10].
By the way, the controllability of positive discrete-time linear systems
Manuscript received October 25, 2005; revised July 19, 2006 and May 7,2007. Recommended by Associate Editor A. Hansson.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and ElectronicsEngineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima 890, Japan (e-mail:[email protected]).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAC.2007.904278
was discussed recently [11], [12]. But the controllability of positive
systems is different from that of ordinary systems with positive controls
because both of inputs and states are restricted to be nonnegative in
positive systems.
This note is constructed as follows. In Section II, some definitions
are given for preliminaries. In Section III, a necessary and sufficient
condition is given for a continuous-time linear system to be positive
controllable based on the Jordan canonical form and a method is pro-posed to test the positive controllability. In Section IV, an example is
presented to illustrate the proposed method. Finally in Section V, con-
cluding remarks are stated.
II. PRELIMINARIES
Consider a multiple input continuous-time linear system described
by
S : _xxx ( t ) = A xA xA x ( t ) + B uB uB u ( t ) (1)
wherexxx ( t ) 2
n ,uuu ( t ) 2
m ,AAA 2
n 2 n ,BBB 2
n 2 m . The control
input that satisfies uuu ( k ) 2m
i = 1
[ 0 ; 1 ) is called a positive control.
Definition 1: Let xxx0
and xxxf
be any initial and final states, respec-
tively. Then system S is calledpositive controllableif there exist a finitetime
and a positive controluuu ( t ) 0
;0 t
, which will bring
the system from xxx ( 0 ) = xxx0
to xxx ( ) = xxxf
.
Definition 2: If xi
> 0 or xi
0 for all i = 1 ; 2 ; . . . ; n , then
xxx > 0 or xxx 0 , respectively, where xxx [ x1
; x
2
; . . . ; x
n
]
T with T
denoting the transposition. Further we use IIIn
2
n 2 n as the identity
matrix and the following notations:
C ( AAA ; B B B ) BBB ; A A A BBB ; . . . ; AAA
n 0 1
BBB 2
n 2 n m
EEE
m
[ 1 ; 1 ; . . . ; 1 ]
T
2
m
; 0
n
[ 0 ; 0 ; . . . ; 0 ]
T
2
n
eee
m 1
[ 1 ; 0 ; 0 ; . . . ; 0 ]
T
2
m
; eee
m 2
[ 0 ; 1 ; 0 ; . . . ; 0 ]
T
2
m
; . . . :
Definition 3: Let f k1
; k
2
; . . . ; k
m
g be one of the rearrangements
of f 1 ; 2 ; . . . ; m g . Then WWW [ eeem k
; eee
m k
; . . . ; eee
m k
] 2
m 2 m is
called a permutation matrix.
Definition 4: By a nonsingular real transformation of the state vari-
able, ~xxx ( t ) = VVV 0 1 xxx ( t ) , system S described by (1) is transformed into
~
S :
_
~xxx ( t ) =
~
AAA ~xxx ( t ) +
~
BBB uuu ( t ) ; ~xxx ( t ) 2
n
(2)
where
~
AAA VVV
0 1
AAA VVV ;
~
BBB VVV
0 1
BBB ; V V V 2
n 2 n
; d e t ( VVV ) 6= 0 : (3)
If the following holds:
~
AAA VVV
0 1
AAA VVV
~
AAA
1 1
0
~
AAA
2 1
~
AAA
2 2
~
BBB VVV
0 1
BBB
~
BBB
1
~
BBB
2
; VVV
0 1
xxx ( t ) ~xxx ( t )
~xxx
1
( t )
~xxx
2
( t )
~
AAA
1 1
2
~n 2 ~n
;
~
AAA
2 1
2
~n 2 ~n
;
~
AAA
2 2
2
~n 2 ~n
;
~
BBB
1
2
~n 2 m
~
BBB
2
2
~n 2 m
; n = ~n
1
+ ~n
2
(4)
then system ~S1
described by
~
S
1
:
_
~xxx
1
( t ) =
~
AAA
1 1
~xxx
1
( t ) +
~
BBB
1
uuu ( t ) ; ~xxx
1
( t ) 2
~n (5)
is called a subsystem of S .
Note that in obtaining the triangular form ~AAA in (4), VVV can be calcu-
lated based on anAAA
-invariant subspace [13].0018-9286/$25.00 2007 IEEE