Stabilizability by state feedback implies stabilizability by encoded state feedback

Encoded state feedback is a term which refers to the situation in which the state feedback signal is sampled every T units of time and converted (encoded) into a binary representation. In this note stabilization of nonlinear systems by encoded state feedback is studied. It is shown that any nonlinear control system which can be globally asymptotically stabilized by “standard” (i.e. with no encoding) state feedback can also be globally asymptotically stabilized by encoded state feedback, provided that the number of bits used to encode the samples is not less than an explicitly determined lower bound. By means of this bound, we are able to establish a direct relationship between the size of the expected region of attraction and the data rate, under the stabilizability assumption only, a result which – to the best of our knowledge – does not have any precedent in the literature.