Allowable delay sets for the stability analysis of linear time-varying delay systems using a delay-dependent reciprocally convex lemma

Abstract

This paper addresses the stability analysis of linear systems subject to a time-varying delay. The contribution of this paper is twofolds. First, we aim at presenting a new matrix inequality, which can be seen as an improved version of the reciprocally convex combination, which provides a more accurate delay-dependent lower bound. When gathering this new inequality with the Wirtinger-based integral inequality, efficient stability conditions expressed in terms of LMI are designed and show a clear reduction of the conservatism with a reasonable associated computational cost. The second original contribution of this paper consists in noting that stability conditions issued from the Wirtinger-based integral inequality depends in an affine manner on the bounds of the delay function and also on its derivative. This allows to refine the definition of allowable delay set and to relax usual convex on the delay function. As a result of this new characterization, the LMI conditions allows obtaining stability regions for slow time-varying delay systems which are very closed to the constant delay case.