Pole assignment for linear time-invariant systems by periodic memoryless output feedback

It is well known that the poles of a linear time-invariant controllable and observable system can be assigned arbitrarily by state feedback. When only the output is available, pole assignment is still possible by means of dynamic output feedback. In this paper the potential of time-varying memoryless output feedback is considered. It is shown that, up to some technical conditions, it is indeed possible to allocate the poles of a linear time-invariant discrete-time system by memoryless output feedback with periodic gains. The period of the gains is (n + 1) with n the order of the system. The power of the design technique is proved to be comparable to what can be achieved by the classical dynamic feedback approach.