Bounding the distance of a controllable and observable system to an uncontrollable or unobservable one

Abstract

Let $(A,B,C)$ be a triple of matrices representing a time-invariant linear system $\left .\aligned \dot x(t)&=Ax(t)+Bu(t)\\y(t)&=Cx(t)\endaligned \right \}$ under similarity equivalence, corresponding to a realization of a prescribed transfer function matrix. In this paper we measure the distance between a irreducible realization, that is to say a controllable and observable triple of matrices $(A,B,C)$ and the nearest reducible one that is to say uncontrollable or unobservable one. Different upper bounds are obtained in terms of singular values of the controllability matrix $C(A,B,C)$, observability matrix $O(A,B,C)$ and controllability and observability matrix $CO(A,B,C)$ associated to the triple.