Global regulation of large-scale nonlinear systems via decentralized output-feedback switching control

This article concentrates on the global regulation problem for a class of large-scale nonlinear systems with unknown growth rate and unknown external disturbances. In contrast to closely related works, the highlight of this article is that a novel decentralized output-feedback switching control method is proposed for the first time to offset the serious uncertainties. By integrating logic-based switching technique and gain scaling technique, this method can instantly adjust the controller parameters (that is, the scaling gain can be tuned online in a piecewise constant manner), and thus has strong adaptive capability as well as disturbance tolerance. Moreover, the decentralized output-feedback switching controller designed by such the method has a concise linear-like form and low complexity. It is shown that the objective of global regulation is finally achieved after a finite number of switching moments. Finally, two examples, including an engineering feedback control system design example, are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.