On the finite-time boundedness of linear systems

Abstract This paper deals with the finite-time boundedness (FTB) of linear time-varying (LTV) systems; in this context, the novel contribution of our work goes in several directions. The first result is a sufficient condition for FTB when the plant input is generated by an exo-system; it is worth noting that constant, norm bounded signals, which most part of the previous literature has considered so far, belong to such class of inputs. To this regard, it is possible to compare our result with the existing literature, which shows that our approach yields less conservative conditions. The second result provided in the paper, is a sufficient condition for FTB when the input belongs to  L 2 , the class of square integrable signals, which have never been considered so far. In both cases, the proposed results require the solution of a feasibility problem constrained by differential linear matrix inequalities (DLMIs). A third contribution of the paper proves that, from the system-theoretic point of view, the obtained FTB conditions can be interpreted in terms of the norm of a suitable input–output operator. As a consequence of this fact, we are able to find alternative and equivalent conditions for FTB, both for the exogenous and the  L 2 cases, which are based on the solution of differential Lyapunov equations (DLEs), which are much more efficient from the computational point of view. The DLMI-based condition, however, is fundamental to solve the design problem, which is also investigated in the paper. Some examples show that the proposed technique is less conservative with respect to the previous literature, when exogenous inputs are considered, and its effectiveness when  L 2 signals are considered. Moreover, one example is devoted to show that the analysis approach, based on the solution of DLE, is much more efficient from the computational point of view with respect to the one based on DLMIs; finally the last example investigates the application of the state feedback control technique.