Stability analysis for a class of switched linear systems

This paper investigates the stability of a class of switched linear systems, and proposes a number of new results on the stability analysis. A novel analysis method is developed by using the 2-norm technique, and then several stability results are obtained based on the new analysis method. It is shown that the main results obtained in this paper not only guarantee the stability of the systems under arbitrary switching, but also provide an algorithm to find the minimum dwell time (MDT) with which switches make the switched systems stable. Finally, several illustrative examples with numerical simulations are studied by using the results obtained in this paper. The study of examples shows that our analysis method works very well in analyzing the stability of some classes of switched linear systems and, moreover, it has some advantages over the common quadratic Lyapunov function method in some cases. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society