The Singular Angle of Nonlinear Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce an angle notion, called the singular angle, for stable nonlinear systems from an inputoutput perspective. The proposed system singular angle, based on the angle between L2-signals, describes an upper bound for the "rotating effect" from the system input to output signals. It is, thus, different from the recently appeared nonlinear system phase which adopts the complexification of real-valued signals using the Hilbert transform. It can quantify the passivity and serve as an angular counterpart to the system L2-gain. It also provides an alternative to the nonlinear system phase. A nonlinear small angle theorem, which involves a comparison of the loop system angle with π, is established for feedback stability analysis. When dealing with multi-input multi-output linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, we further come up with the frequency-wise and H∞ singular angle notions based on the matrix singular angle, and develop corresponding LTI small angle theorems.