Chapter 2 Linear System

In this course, we will be dealing primarily with linear systems, a special class of systems for which a great deal is known. During the first half of the twentieth century, linear systems were analyzed using frequency domain (e.g., Laplace and z-transform) based approaches in an effort to deal with issues such as noise and bandwidth issues in communication systems. While they provided a great deal of intuition and were sufficient to establish some fundamental results, frequency domain approaches presented various drawbacks when control scientists started studying more complicated systems (containing multiple inputs and outputs, nonlinearities, noise, and so forth). Starting in the 1950’s (around the time of the space race), control engineers and scientists started turning to state-space models of control systems in order to address some of these issues. These time-domain approaches are able to effectively represent concepts such as the internal state of the system, and also present a method to introduce optimality conditions into the controller design procedure. We will be using the state-space (or “modern”) approach to control almost exclusively in this course, and the purpose of this chapter is to review some of the essential concepts in this area.