This book is the result of our teaching over the years an undergraduate course on Linear Optimal Systems to applied mathematicians and a first-year graduate course on Linear Systems to engineers. The contents of the book bear the strong influence of the great advances in the field and of its enormous literature. However, we made no attempt to have a complete coverage. Our motivation was to write a book on linear systems that covers finite dimensional linear systems, always keeping in mind the main purpose of engineering and applied science, which is to analyze, design, and improve the performance of phy sical systems. Hence we discuss the effect of small nonlinearities, and of perturbations of feedback. It is our on the data; we face robustness issues and discuss the properties hope that the book will be a useful reference for a first-year graduate student. We assume that a typical reader with an engineering background will have gone through the conventional undergraduate single-input single-output linear systems course; an elementary course in control is not indispensable but may be useful for motivation. For readers from a mathematical curriculum we require only familiarity with techniques of linear algebra and of ordinary differential equations."

This book is the result of our teaching over the years an undergraduate course on Linear Optimal Systems to applied mathematicians and a first-year graduate course on Linear Systems to engineers. The contents of the book bear the strong influence of the great advances in the field and of its enormous literature. However, we made no attempt to have a complete coverage. Our motivation was to write a book on linear systems that covers finite dimensional linear systems, always keeping in mind the main purpose of engineering and applied science, which is to analyze, design, and improve the performance of phy sical systems. Hence we discuss the effect of small nonlinearities, and of perturbations of feedback. It is our on the data; we face robustness issues and discuss the properties hope that the book will be a useful reference for a first-year graduate student. We assume that a typical reader with an engineering background will have gone through the conventional undergraduate single-input single-output linear systems course; an elementary course in control is not indispensable but may be useful for motivation. For readers from a mathematical curriculum we require only familiarity with techniques of linear algebra and of ordinary differential equations.

The algebraic theory of linear, time-invariant, multiinput-multioutput (MIMO) feedback systems has developed rapidly during the past decade. The factorization approach is simple and elegant; it is suitable for both continuous-time and discrete-time lumped-parameter system models, and many of its results apply directly to distributed-parameter systems. This volume streamlines the algebreaic approach to the analysis and synthesis of linear time-invariant MIMO feedback systems.

This volume is the result of our teaching in the last few years of a first year graduate course on multivariable feedback systems addressed to control engineers. The prerequisites are modest: an undergraduate course in control (for acquaintance with concepts, terms, and design goals) and a senior-graduate course in linear systems. This volume covers lumped linear time-invariant multi-input multi-output systems with strong emphasis on control problems. The purpose is to provide a rapid introduction to some of the main and simpler results of control theory and to provide access to the current literature. Note that our exposition pays particular attention to the time-domain behavior of the systems under study. Note also that we cover neither optimization nor stochastic systems since these topics are treated in separate courses. As is obvious from its abundant literature, multivariable control is a very rapidly developing field. Consequently, we have no expectation that our exposition will become definitive; however, we hope that our efforts will be found useful. To get an idea of the contents, we suggest reading carefully the table of contents and the introduction of the chapters. Roughly, Chapter 1 is an introduction to feedback issues in a multivariable context (desensitization, large gain, singular values, etc. ). Chapters 2 and 3 cover the mathematical tools for handling transfer functions as polynomial-matrix fractions and for studying systems described by polynomial matrices. Chapter 4 uses these tools to cover the general theory of interconnected systems."