Structural Controllability of Switched Linear Systems

In this paper, the structural controllability of switched linear systems is investigated. In particular, switched linear systems with independent subsystem models are studied. The structural controllability is a generalization of the traditional controllability concept for dynamical systems, and purely based on the graphic topologies among state and input vertices. First, two kinds of graphic representations of switched linear systems are proposed. Second, graph theory based necessary and sufficient characterizations of the structural controllability for switched linear systems are presented. Finally, the paper concludes with one illustrative example and discussions on the results and future work.