Remarks on linearization of discrete-time autonomous systems and nonlinear observer design

This paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions under which a discrete-time autonomous system with outputs is locally state equivalent to an observable linear system or a system in the nonlinear observer form (Krener and Isidori, 1983). In particular, an open problem raised in Lee and Nam (1991), namely the observer linearization problem, is solved for a nonlinear system which may not be invertible (i.e., the mapping f may not be a local diffeomorphism). As a consequence, the nonlinear observer design problem is solved by means of exact linearization techniques.