Proceedings of the 37th Chinese Control Conference

July 25-27, 2018, Wuhan, China

Design of High-Gain-Observer-Based State Feedback Controller

for Positive Time-Delay System
Mingyuan Xie1,2 , Jinhua She1,2,3 , Zhentao Liu1,2 ,∗
1. School of Automation, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
2. Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Control and Intelligent Automation for Complex Systems, Wuhan 430074, China
3. School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Technology, Tokyo 192-0982, Japan

Abstract: This paper investigates the stabilizability of positive time-delay system. The nonnegative constraint makes the design
of a control law different from a general system. Firstly, a method to calculate the L1 gain of a positive time-delay system is
presented. Then, the design of a state feedback controller and a high-gain observer is presented by taking full advantage of
the characteristics of the positiveness of the system. Finally, the observer and feedback controller are combined to stabilize the
system and improve dynamic performance. A numerical example illustrates the provided method is effective.
Key Words: Positive system, Delay, L1 gain, Asymptotically stable, High-Gain Observer, Observer-based feedback controller.

1 Introduction A > 0 (< 0) stands for a symmetric positive (negative) def-

The state and output of a biological population system are
nonnegative [1]. Such a kind of a system is called a pos-
itive system. Those systems are easily found in the fields
of engineering, ecology, economics, biomedicine, and social
sciences. The states in such systems are, for example, the
population of a society, the number of animals or plants, the
content of a substance in a material, the absolute tempera-
ture, the amount of packets flowing in a network, etc. [2].
The nonnegativeness of the states imposes a constraint on
the design of a control system. Some of those systems, for
instance, a population system, also contain a time delay. A
time delay is caused by many reasons. Some are [3]
1) the measurement of system variables,
2) physical, biological, or chemical properties of a system,
and
3) signal transmission process.
A time delay usually leads to instability and undesirable
performance. The stability of a general system is often af-
fected by the size of a delay. However, the asymptotic stabil-
ity of a positive system that contains a bounded time-varying
or a constant time delay is independent of the size of the de-
lay and is only related to the system matrix [4]. This illus-
trates the uniqueness of the positive system, and this unique
charm draws a great deal of attention.
This paper first introduces the basic concepts of a positive
system. Next, a method to calculate the L1 gain of such
a system with a time delay is described. Then, the design
of a direct feedback controller and a high-gain observer is
explained. Finally, the feedback controller and the observer
are combined to stabilize a positive time-delay system.
Notations: The notations used throughout the paper are
fairly standard. The superscript  T stands for matrix trans-
position. A  0 ( 0,  0, ≺ 0) means that all the ele-
ments of A are nonnegative (nonpositive, positive, negative).
inite matrix. 1p is a p-column vector with all elements being
1. For a system I, ||I||L1 −L1 is the L1 norm of the system
transfer function, which is used to represent the system’s am-
plification or attenuation of the input signal spontaneously.
2 Design of Feedback Controller and High-Gain
Observer
The design of a direct feedback control and a high-gain
observer is presented for a continuous positive time-delay
system.
2.1 Positive system
The definition of a positive system is given by the follows
[5].
Definittion 1 If the state and output of a system are nonneg-
ative for any nonnegative initial state and nonnegative input,
the linear system is said to be a positive system.
Consider a continuous LTI system:
⎧
⎨ ẋ(t) = Ax(t) + Ad x(t − τ ) + Bu(t)
y(t) = Cx(t) (1)
⎩
x(t) = x0 (t), t ∈ [−τ, 0].
A positive system can be stated as follows.
The following definitions are needed in the analysis and
design of a control system.
Definittion 2 ([6]) If for any x0 (t) ≥ 0 and u(t) ≥ 0, the
state and output of (1) satisfy that x(t) ≥ 0 and y(t) ≥ 0,
then (1) is said to be a positive system.
Definittion 3 ([6]) A square matrix is called a M etzler ma-
trix if its offdiagonal elements are nonnegative. A square
matrix is called a Hurwitz matrix if the real part of each of
its eigenvalues is negative.

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of Chi-
na under Grant 2017YFB1300900; by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China under Grants 61473313, 61210011, 61403422, 61273102
and 61703375; by the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation of Chi-
na under Grant 2015CFA010; and by the 111 Project, China under Grant
B17040.
∗Corresponding author: Zhentao Liu (liuzhentao@cug.edu.cn)
Some useful lemmas are first presented.
Lemma 1 ([6]) The system (1) is a positive system iff A is a
M etzler matrix, and Ad  0, B  0, and C  0.
Lemma 2 ([7]) Assuming that (1) is a positive system, the
following propositions are equivalent to each other:

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 • The system is asymptotically stable;
• (A + Ad ) is a Hurwitz matrix; and
• There is a diagonal matrix P > 0 that makes P (A +
Ad ) + (A + Ad )T P < 0.
Lemma 3 ([8]) The asymptotic stability of a fixed time-
delay system is independent of the size of the delay, but only
is related with the system matrix.
2.2 L1 gain of positive time-delay system
For positive systems, the L1 gain was introduced and then
Fig. 1: Time response of closed-loop system.
usually used for input-output performance analysis, which
has been proven to be a more useful description since the 1-
norm gives the sum of the values of the components[9, 10]. Taking 1-norm on both sides of the above equation yields
Definittion 4 Let Ln1 be a space with a sig-  ∞  ∞
nal v(t) that has a finite L1 norm. L+
1 = −1
y(t)1 dt ≤  − C(A + Ad ) B1 u(t)dt. (7)
{v(t)|v(t) ∈ L1 , v(t) ≥ 0, ∀t ∈ [0, +∞]}.
n 0 0

Lemma 4 ([11]) Consider an asymptotically stable system. That is,

Let x0 (t) = 0, then its L1 gain, γ, is defined to be the min-
imum nonnegative γ that satisfies ||y||L1 ≤ γ||ω||L1 for all ||I||L1 −L1 = ||G(0)||1 = || − C(A + Ad )−1 B||1 . (8)
0 = ω ∈ L+1.
Lemma 7 ([12]) For a continuous positive system, the
Lemma 5 ([12]) For a positive time-delay system I, if γ > system is asymptotically stable and satisfies ||y||L1 ≤
0, the following propositions are equivalent: γ||ω||L1 (ω = 0, γ > 0) if there exists a vector λ > 0
1) System is asymptotically stable and ||I||L1 −L1 < γ; and  T
λ (A + Ad ) + 1T C ≺ 0
2) 1Tq G(0) ≺ γ1p , where G(s) = C(sI − A −
T
(9)
Ad e−sτ )−1 B; and λT B − γ1T ≺ 0.
3) There exists a solution λ (> 0) for a linear program-
2.3 Design of state feedback controller
ming problem λT (A + Ad ) + 1T q C ≺ 0.
For the continuous positive time-delay system (1), the s-
It is easy to obtain the follows from the equivalence in tate feedback controller is
Lemma 5.
Lemma 6 For a positive time-delay system I, ||I||L1 −L1 = u(t) = Kx(t) + Kd x(t − τ ). (10)
||G(0)||1 = || − C(A + Ad )−1 B||1 .
And the closed loop system is
Proof: Note that ⎧
 ∞  ∞ ⎨ ẋ(t) = (A + BK)x(t) + (Ad + BKd )x(t − τ )
y(t)dt = Cx(t)dt (2) y(t) = Cx(t) (11)
⎩
0 0 x(t) = x0 (t), t ∈ [−τ, 0].
 ∞  ∞
The following constraints ensure that (11) is a positive sys-
ẋ(t)dt = (Ax(t) + Ad x(t − τ ) + Bu(t))dt
0 0
tem, asymptotically stable, and has satisfactory dynamic per-
 ∞  ∞ formance [13]:
= (A + Ad ) x(t)dt+B u(t)dt (3) 1) (A + BK) is a M etzler matrix;
0 0
2) (Ad + BKd )  0;
and 3) λT (A + BK + Ad + BKd ) + 1T C ≺ 0; and
 ∞  ∞
−1 4) λT B − γ1T ≺ 0.
x(t)dt = (A + Ad ) ẋ(t)dt
0 0 Constraints 1 and 2 ensure that (11) is a positive system,
 ∞
and 3 and 4 guarantee the asymptotical stability and dynamic
−(A + Ad )−1 B u(t)dt. (4) performance (the L1 gain of the system is less than 1 [14]).
0
The following example illustrates the above statements.
Thus,
⎧  
 ∞  ∞ ⎪ −1 0.5 0.5 0.5
⎪
⎪ A = , A =
C(A + Ad )−1 ⎪
 0.5 −1
y(t)dt = ẋ(t)dt d
⎨  0.5 0.5
0 0
 ∞ 1 0.2 0.2 (12)
⎪
⎪ B= , C=
−C(A + Ad )−1B u(t)dt. (5) ⎪
⎪ 0.5 0.1 0.3
⎩
0 x0 (t) = [1 1]T , τ = 1.
If the initial state of the system is x(0) = 0, then x(∞) = 0
Feedback gains that satisfy Constraints 1-4 can easily be
because the system is asymptotically stable. So
 ∞  ∞ found by MATLAB:
y(t)dt = −C(A + Ad )−1B u(t)dt. (6) K = [−1 − 0.5], Kd = [0 − 0.05]. (13)
0 0

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 A small positive number ε results in a high gain of the ob-
server.
The following example illustrates the validity of the high-
gain observer
⎧  
⎨ A = −0.5 0.1 , A = 0.2 0.1
0.1 −0.5 d
0.1 0.2 (19)
⎩ 

T
(a) Error of x1 for τ = 0.05. (b) Error of x2 for τ = 0.05.
(c) Error of x1 for τ = 1. (d) Error of x2 for τ = 1.
Fig. 2: Responses of high-gain observer for different time
delay, τ .
This gives
||I||L1 −L1 = ||G(0)||1 = || − C(A + Ad )−1 B||1 = 0.3688
(14)
which is much less than 1. The time response of the closed-
loop system is shown in Fig. 1. It is easy to see that the
closed-loop system becomes stable when state feedback is
applied. It proves that state feedback is an effective method.
2.4 Design of high-gain observer
Due to technical or economic reason, it is not easy to ob-
tain all the states in many practical engineering applications.
So, it is necessary and important to design an observer to es-
timate the states [15]. However, observer design techniques
developed for general dynamic systems may not be suitable
for positive systems because the observer design of the pos-
itive system usually involves the problem that the variables
have a positive constraint [16, 17]. A high-gain observers
plays an important role in the feedback control. And it is
also used in this paper [18]. When u(t) = 0, (1) becomes
⎧
⎨ ẋ(t) = Ax(t) + Ad x(t − τ )
y(t) = Cx(t) (15)
⎩ 2) (Ad + BKd )  0;
x(t) = x0 (t), t ∈ [−τ, 0].
Note that the asymptotic stability of a positive system with
a fixed delay is independent of the size of the delay, and is
only related to the system matrix. According to Lemma 2,
we let the system matrix be
à = A + Ad .
The high-gain observer is
dx̂
= Ãx̂ + G(y(t) − C x̂(t)),
dt
C = 1 0 , x0 (t) = 0.8 0.6 .
For the selection of
α1 = α2 = 1, ε = 0.01 (20)
simulation results are shown in Fig. 2. It is clear from the
figure that the high-gain observer ensured that the states of
the observer quickly converged to the system’ states. The
size of the delay did not affect the stability of the observer,
but only the convergent speed of the observer. This verified
that the size of the delay does not influence the asymptotic
stability of a positive system. The above simulation results
show that a high-gain observer can effectively track the state
of a positive time-delay system.
3 Observer-Based Control System Design
In general, all of the states of the system (1) is not avail-
able. Thus, the direct feedback control law (10), cannot be
used straightly, and an observer needs to be employed to pro-
duce an estimate of the state. In this study, we incorporated
the high-gain observer with a feedback control law to con-
struct a control system for an unstable continuous time-delay
positive system (1):
 dx̂(t)
dt = Ax̂(t)+Ad x̂(t − τ )+Bu(t) + G[y(t) − C x̂(t)]
u(t) = K x̂(t) + Kd x̂(t − τ ).
(21)
Since the original system is unstable, using feedback con-
trol law is a good choice to stabilize the original system and
make the closed system has a better dynamic performance.
Furthermore, since the original system is a positive system,
the closed-loop system should also be a positive system.
Based on the above analysis, the following results can be
drawn.
Theorem 1 For an unstable continuous time-delay positive
system (1), the control law (21) stabilizes it and guarantees
that the closed-loop system is a positive system if the follow-
ing conditions hold:
1) (A + BK) is a M etzler matrix;
3) λT (A + BK + Ad + BKd ) + 1T C ≺ 0; and
4) λT B − γ1T ≺ 0.
Moreover, according to Theorem 1, in order to improve the
system’s conservative, it is reasonable to let γ be a constant
less than 1. This is illustrated by the following example.
(16) Consider the positive system (1) with the parameters given
by
⎧  
⎪
⎪ −0.5 0.1 0.2 0.2
(17) ⎨ A= , Ad =
 0.4 −0.5 0.2 0.2
⎪ 1.1 

T
and the gain is ⎪
⎩ B= , C = 1 0 x0 (t) = 0.8 0.6 .

α α 2 T 0.1
1
G= . (18) (22)
ε ε2

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(a) Error of x1 for τ = 0.1. (b) Error of x2 for τ = 0.1.
Fig. 3: Time response of closed-loop control system.
In this case, we let γ = 0.5. It is Similar to section 2.3, so
the feedback gains that satisfy Constraints 1-4 can easily be
found by MATLAB.
K = [−4 − 0.0909], Kd = [−0.1818 − 0.1818]. (23)
The parameters for the observer gain were chosen to be
α1 = 1, α2 = 1, ε = 0.001. (24)
Simulation results of the designed control system are
shown in Fig. 3. Clearly, the estimate of the state produced
by the high-gain observer converges very fast, and the con-
trol law stabilizes the closed-loop system.
4 Conclusion
In this paper, two design methods for unstable positive
time-delay system were presented. Firstly, The direct state
feedback control could be used to stabilizes the system and
make the L1 norm of the system less than 1, which guar-
anteed the closed-loop system has a good dynamic perfor-
mance. Secondly, the high-gain observer was employed for
the first time to produce an estimate of the state of the plan-
t. And the state feedback control based on the high-gain
observer could achieve the same effect as the first method.
These two methods were adapted to different situations.
Both the construction of the system and its design were sim-
ple. Numerical examples were presented to demonstrate the
validity of the method. Future works are to extend the re-
sults to a discrete system and a positive system with a time-
varying delay.
Acknowledgements
The first author would like to thank Professor Yijun Zhang
and Doctor Shunyuan Xiao for their helpful direction.
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