On the “Uniform” Observability of Discrete-Time Nonlinear Systems

In constructing an observer for a discrete-time nonlinear system, the system is commonly required to satisfy a certain kind of "uniform" observability condition, that is, the state should always be reconstructible from observation windows of a specific length, irrespective of the values of the state and inputs. In this technical note, it is proved that this "uniform" requirement is unnecessary in the sense that if the initial state and inputs are on a compact set, then the "uniform" observability is derived from its non-uniform counterpart.