Stability of nonlinear feedback systems in a Volterra representation

Presented in this paper is a stability condition for a class of nonlinear feedback systems where the plant dynamics can be represented by a finite series of Volterra kernels. The class of Volterra kernels are limited to p-linear stable operators and may contain pure delays. The stability condition requires that the linear kernel is non-zero and that the closed loop characteristic equation associated with the linearized system is stable. Next, a sufficient condition is developed to upper bound the infinity-norm of an external disturbance signal thereby guaranteeing that the internal and output signals of the closed loop nonlinear system are contained in L_∞. These results are then demonstrated on a design example. A frequency domain controller design procedure is also developed using these results where the trade-off between performance and stability are considered for this class of nonlinear feedback systems.