Global output-feedback stabilization for high-order nonlinear systems with unknown growth rate

This paper considers the global stabilization via time-varying output-feedback for a class of high-order uncertain nonlinear systems with rather weak assumptions. Essentially different from the existing literature, the systems under investigation simultaneously have more serious nonlinearities, unknowns, immeasurableness, and time-variations, which are indicated from the unknown time-varying control coefficients and the higher-order and lower-order unmeasured states dependent growth with the rate of unknown function of time and output. Recognizing that adaptive technique is quite hard to apply, a time-varying design scheme is proposed by combining time-varying approach, certainty equivalence principle and homogeneous domination approach. One key point in the design scheme is the selection of the design functions of time, in order to compensate/capture the serious unknowns and serious time-variations, and another one is the design of a time-varying observer to rebuild the unmeasured system states. With the appropriate choice of the involved design functions, the designed controller makes all the signals of the closed-loop system globally bounded and ultimately converge to zero. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.