Delay-independent stability criteria for linear continuous systems with time-varying delays

New stability criteria for linear continuous systems with multiple time-varying delays are established by the Lyapunov function approach based on a new stability theorem for general type of retarded dynamical systems. A new technique for estimating the derivative of Lyapunov function along the solution of system at some specific instants is used so that the case of multiple time-varying delays can be dealt with less conservatively. In addition, (i) every criterion has only one tuning parameter matrix P > 0 as the Lyapunov-type stability criterion for the corresponding linear continuous system without delays does; (ii) all the criteria are given in LMI forms and hence they are numerically tractable. It is remarked that the established criteria are less conservative than the existing ones in the literature. Three examples are given to illustrate the proposed method and to show the superiority of the obtained results to the existing ones in the literature.