Controllability of linear fractional systems with delay in control (Q2171684)

The article studies linear control systems of the type \(Dx(t)=Ax(t)+Bu(t)+Cu(t-h)\), where \(x(t)\) takes values in \(\mathbf{R}^n\), \(h\) is a positive delay, and \(D\) is the fractional differential operator called ``Atangana-Baleanu fractional derivative using the Caputo approach''. The authors study the controllability of such type of systems, where the system is said to be controllable if it is always possible to chose the input law \(u\) that induces a prescribed state \(x(t_1)\) at a fixed time \(t_1>h\), given the initial state \(x(0)\) and the initial condition for the control on the interval \([-h,0]\). The first contribution of the paper is an expression for the solution of the linear system. The expression is obtained by integrating the Laplace transform of the evolution and considering the inverse Laplace transform. Then the authors characterize the controllability in terms of the invertibility of a suitable Gramian matrix. Finally, the controllability is proved to be equivalent to the surjectivity of the Kalman matrix \([B AB \dots A^{n-1}B C AC \dots A^{n-1}C]\), i.e, it tuns out to be equivalent to the controllability in time larger than \(h\) of the linear system \(x'(t)=Ax(t)+Bu(t)+Cu(t-h)\).