New results for analysis of systems with repeated nonlinearities (Q5936366)

The authors present some sufficient conditions and resulting algorithms for the analysis of well posedness and stability of dynamical feedback systems with repeated scalar static monotonic or slope restricted nonlinearities. The line of reasoning follows the one proposed in previous works of the authors (see, e.g., \textit{A. Megretski} and \textit{A. Rantzer} [IEEE Trans. Autom. Control 42, 819--830 (1997; Zbl 0881.93062)]) based on integral quadratic constraints (IQC) for inputs and outputs of nonlinear operators and the Popov multipliers. Here, the IQCs are modified in a way which makes it possible to deal with repeated nonlinearities. The obtained well posedness and stability criteria are nothing else but natural extensions of well-known Zames-Falb-Kudrewicz conditions. The authors discuss a computational algorithm used to evaluate the stability conditions by solving a finite dimensional convex feasibility problem. By using the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov lemma, the stability condition is transformed into a linear matrix inequality feasibility problem. An example presented in the paper demonstrates that the proposed conditions are less conservative than previously known results based on the IQC or Lyapunov approaches.