International Journal of Control, Vol.79, No.4, 311-326, 2006
Absolute stability and integral control
Absolute stability results of both circle criterion and Popov type are derived finite-dimensional linear plants with non-linearity in the feedback loop. The linear plant contains an integrator (and so is not asymptotically stable). The (possibly time-varying) non-linearity satisfies a particular sector condition which allows for cases with zero lower gain (such as saturation and deadzone). The conjunction of stable, but not asymptotically stable, linear plants and non-linearities with possibly zero lower gain is a distinguishing feature of the paper. The absolute stability results are invoked in proving convergence and stability properties of low-gain integral feedback control for tracking of constant reference signals in the context of exponentially stable linear systems subject to input and output non-linearities.