Stability of nonlinear time-varying feedback systems

In this paper, the stability of nonlinear time-varying feedback systems is studied using a “passive operator” technique. The feedback system is assumed to consist of a linear time-invariant operator G(s) in the forward path and a nonlinear time-varying gain function f(·)K(t) in the feedback path. The stability condition indicates that the bound on the time derivative dK(t)/(dt)] depends both on the nonlinearity f(·) and the multiplier Z(s) chosen to make G(s)Z(s) positive real. It is also shown that the main result in this paper can be specialized to yield many of the results obtained so far for nonlinear time-invariant systems and linear time-varying systems.