Complex Time Delay Systems

One of the major contemporary challenges in both physical and social sciences is modeling, analyzing, and understanding the self-organization, evolution, behavior, and eventual decay of complex dynamical systems ranging from cell assemblies to the human brain to animal societies. The multi-faceted problems in this domain require a wide range of methods from various scienti?c disciplines. There is no question that the inclusion of time delays in complex system models considerably enriches the challenges presented by the problems. Although this inclusion often becomes inevitable as real-world applications demand more and more realistic m- els, the role of time delays in the context of complex systems so far has not attracted the interest it deserves. The present volume is an attempt toward ?lling this gap. There exist various useful tools for the study of complex time-delay systems. At the forefront is the mathematical theory of delay equations, a relatively mature ?eld in many aspects, which provides some powerful techniques for analytical inquiries, along with some other tools from statistical physics, graph theory, computer science, dynamical systems theory, probability theory, simulation and optimization software, and so on. Nevertheless, the use of these methods requires a certain synergy to address complex systems problems, especially in the presence of time delays.

One of the major contemporary challenges in both physical and social sciences is modeling, analyzing, and understanding the self-organization, evolution, behavior, and eventual decay of complex dynamical systems ranging from cell assemblies to the human brain to animal societies. The multi-faceted problems in this domain require a wide range of methods from various scienti?c disciplines. There is no question that the inclusion of time delays in complex system models considerably enriches the challenges presented by the problems. Although this inclusion often becomes inevitable as real-world applications demand more and more realistic m- els, the role of time delays in the context of complex systems so far has not attracted the interest it deserves. The present volume is an attempt toward ?lling this gap. There exist various useful tools for the study of complex time-delay systems. At the forefront is the mathematical theory of delay equations, a relatively mature ?eld in many aspects, which provides some powerful techniques for analytical inquiries, along with some other tools from statistical physics, graph theory, computer science, dynamical systems theory, probability theory, simulation and optimization software, and so on. Nevertheless, the use of these methods requires a certain synergy to address complex systems problems, especially in the presence of time delays.

This book is a self-contained presentation of the background and progress of the study of time-delay systems, a subject with broad applications to a number of areas.

In many practical applications we deal with a wide class of dynamical systems that are comprised of a family of continuous-time or discrete-time subsystems and a rule orchestrating the switching between the subsystems. This class of systems is frequently called switched system. Switched linear systems provide a framework that bridges the linear systems and the complex and/or uncertain systems. The mo- vation for investigating this class of systems is twofold: ?rst, it has an inherent multi-modal behavior in the sense that several dynamical subsystems are required to describe their behavior, which might depend on various environmental factors. Second, the methods of intelligent control systems are based on the idea of swit- ing between different controllers. Looked at in this light, switched systems provide an integral framework to deal with complex system behaviors such as chaos and multiple limit cycles and gain more insights into powerful tools such as intelligent control, adaptive control, and robust control. Switched systems have been inves- gated for a long time in the control and systems literature and have increasingly attracted more attention for the past three decades. The number of journal articles, books, and conference papers have grown exponentially and a number of fundam- tal concepts and powerful tools have been developed. It has been pointed out that switched systems have been studied from various viewpoints.

Recently, there have been significant developments in robust control of time-delay systems. This volume presents a systematic treatment of robust control for such systems in the frequency domain. The emphasis is on systems with a single input or output delay, although the delay-free part of the plant can be multi-input-multi-output, in which case the delays in different channels should be the same. The author covers the whole range of H-infinity control of time-delay systems: from controller parameterization implementation; from the Nehari problem to the four-block problem; from theoretical developments to practical issues. The major tools used are similarity transformation, the chain-scattering approach and J-spectral factorization. Self-contained, "Robust Control of Time-delay Systems" will interest control theorists and mathematicians working with time-delay systems. Its methodical approach will be of value to graduates studying general robust control theory or its applications in time-delay systems.

Time-delay occurs in many physical, industrial and engineering systems such as biological systems, chemical systems, metallurgical processing systems, nuclear reactors, hydraulic systems and electrical networks, to name a few. The reason for the occurrence could be attributed to inherent physical phenomena like mass transport flow or recycling. It could result from the finite capabilities of information processing and data transmission among various parts of the system. In addition, they could be by-products of computational delays or could be intentionally introduced for some design consideration. Such delays could be constant or time varying, known or unknown, deterministic or stochastic depending on the system under consideration. In recent years, time-delay, which exists in networked control systems, has brought more complex problems into a new research area. Frequently, it is a source of the generation of oscillation, instability and poor performance. Therefore, the subject of Time-Delay Systems (TDS) has been investigated as functional differential equations over the past four decades. Because the presence of the delay factor renders the system analysis more complicated, the problems of stability and stabilization are of great importance. This book presents some basic theories of stability and stabilization of systems with time-delays. More attention is paid to the synthesis of systems with time-delay. That is, control of nonlinear systems with delay; networked control systems; positive delay systems; fuzzy systems; and reset control with random delay are all analysed within this book.

Synchronization of chaotic systems, a patently nonlinear phenomenon, has emerged as a highly active interdisciplinary research topic at the interface of physics, biology, applied mathematics and engineering sciences. In this connection, time-delay systems described by delay differential equations have developed as particularly suitable tools for modeling specific dynamical systems. Indeed, time-delay is ubiquitous in many physical systems, for example due to finite switching speeds of amplifiers in electronic circuits, finite lengths of vehicles in traffic flows, finite signal propagation times in biological networks and circuits, and quite generally whenever memory effects are relevant. This monograph presents the basics of chaotic time-delay systems and their synchronization with an emphasis on the effects of time-delay feedback which give rise to new collective dynamics. Special attention is devoted to scalar chaotic/hyperchaotic time-delay systems, and some higher order models, occurring in different branches of science and technology as well as to the synchronization of their coupled versions. Last but not least, the presentation as a whole strives for a balance between the necessary mathematical description of the basics and the detailed presentation of real-world applications.

The beginning of the 21st century can be characterized as the” time-delay boom” leading to numerous important results. The purpose of this book is two-fold, to familiarize the non-expert reader with time-delay systems and to provide a systematic treatment of modern ideas and techniques for experts. This book is based on the course ”Introduction to time-delay systems” for graduate students in Engineering and Applied Mathematics that the author taught in Tel Aviv University in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic years. The sufficient background to follow most of the material are the undergraduate courses in mathematics and an introduction to control. The book leads the reader from some basic classical results on time-delay systems to recent developments on Lyapunov-based analysis and design with applications to the hot topics of sampled-data and network-based control. The objective is to provide useful tools that will allow the reader not only to apply the existing methods, but also to develop new ones. It should be of interest for researchers working in the field, for graduate students in engineering and applied mathematics, and for practicing engineers. It may also be used as a textbook for a graduate course on time-delay systems.