Absolute stability criteria for large-scale Lurie direct control systems with time-varying coefficients

The absolute stability of large-scale Lurie direct control systems with time-varying coefficients is investigated. Based on the decomposition method for large-scale systems and technique of the nonsingular M-matrix, a suitable scalar Lyapunov function as a weighted sum is constructed. By estimating its total time derivative, some absolute stability criteria and practical corollaries are derived. Furthermore, the results are extended to multiple nonlinearities. The salient feature of this paper is that the criteria which we propose allow for the situation that the norms of time-varying coefficients are unbounded. The main idea of the methodology is that even if the coefficients are norm-unbounded, by restricting their relative magnitude, the problem of negative definiteness for the derivative can also be changed into the problem of stability for a constant matrix. Finally, some numerical examples are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed criteria.