Analysis and design of switched normal systems

In this paper, we study the stability property for a class of switched linear systems whose subsystems are normal. The subsystems can be continuous-time or discrete-time ones. We show that when all the continuous-time subsystems are Hurwitz stable and all the discrete-time subsystems are Schur stable, a common quadratic Lyapunov function exists for the subsystems and thus the switched system is exponentially stable under arbitrary switching. We show that when unstable subsystems are involved, for a desired decay rate of the system, if the activation time ratio between stable subsystems and unstable ones is less than a certain value (calculated using the decay rate), then the switched system is exponentially stable with the desired decay rate.