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Observers and observability for uncertain nonlinear systems: A necessary and sufficient condition
Author(s) -
Bai Wenyan,
Chen Sen,
Huang Yi,
Guo BaoZhu,
Wu ZeHao
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of robust and nonlinear control
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1099-1239
pISSN - 1049-8923
DOI - 10.1002/rnc.4531
Subject(s) - observability , unobservable , nonlinear system , convergence (economics) , control theory (sociology) , computer science , mathematics , matrix (chemical analysis) , artificial intelligence , control (management) , physics , materials science , quantum mechanics , economics , composite material , econometrics , economic growth
Summary In this paper, observers and observability for uncertain nonlinear systems are systematically discussed. It is shown that for the convergence of a large class of observers, featured with the augment state to estimate the uncertainty, it requires not only the observability condition for the augment matrix pair but, more importantly, requires a structural condition first proposed in this paper. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the combination of this structural condition and the observability of the augment matrix pair is a necessary and sufficient condition for the convergence of the observers and the observability of the original uncertain nonlinear systems. This implies that both the structural condition and the observability condition of the augment matrix pair reveal essential feature of the observing problems for uncertain nonlinear systems. In addition, for unobservable uncertain nonlinear systems, which do not satisfy this necessary and sufficient condition, the biased estimation error is explicitly presented, which can be used to evaluate the estimation performance of this class of observers. The numerical simulations for three typical examples are carried out to validate our theoretical analysis.