Nonlinear Observer Design

and Applications

1. Introduction
From control system point of view systems can be classified as linear and nonlinear systems. Majority of
practical systems exhibits nonlinear dynamics. Chaotic system is a subclass of nonlinear system which
exhibit interesting dynamical behavior. Chaotic systems show irregular bounded oscillations of system
states. These systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions and parametric variations.
Control of chaotic system and its potential application to secure communication was first proposed by
Pecora & Carroll [1]. Since then many researchers have been attracted to control of chaotic system, due
to its application to Mechanical System [2,3], Chemical System [4], Biological System [5], Economics [6]
and Electrical System [7]. Synchronization of chaotic system is another area of prime interest due to its
application in secure communication. The idea of synchronization is to use the output of the drive
system to control the response system so that output of the response system follows the output of the
drive system. In general, design of stabilizing and synchronizing schemes for nonlinear systems has been
a prominent area of research since last few decades. In literature there exists number of control
techniques, each addressing control of a particular class of nonlinear system. Some of these techniques
are feedback linearization, backstepping, sliding mode control, adaptive control etc [8,9]. These
nonlinear control techniques prominently use Lyapunov theory based analysis as a base for controller
design.

2. Adaptive Synchronization with unknown parameters

Many synchronization methods mainly concern the synchronization of two identical chaotic systems
with known parameters or identical systems with unknown parameters. In real life applications,
however, it is hardly the case that the structure of drive and response chaotic systems can be assumed
to be identical. Moreover the systems parameters are inevitably perturbed by external factors and cant
be known in priori. Therefore synchronization of two different chaotic systems in the presence of
unknown parameters is more useful in real life applications. For this purpose Adaptive Synchronization
is used where system parameters are estimated adaptively [10,11].
Consider the chaotic drive system as

x f ( x) F ( x)
x R m ; f : R m R m F : R m R mxk R k
is a parameter vector of the sytem
The response system is described by

y g ( y ) G ( y ) U
y R m ; g : R m R m G : R m R mxl R l
is a parameter vector of the sytem; U is the controller

Taking error vector as

i 1 Complete Synchronization
i 1 Anti Synchronization
i Projective Synchronization

e y x

diag (1 , 2 ,..., m )
i 0
Now choosing a suitable controller U such that lim
t

y x 0

Error dynamics can be written as

e y x
e g ( y) G( y) ( f ( x) F ( x) ) U

Based on the adaptive technique the adaptive controller is chosen as

U g ( y) G( y) f ( x) F ( x) ke
And the parameter update laws are given as

F T ( x) T e
G T ( y )e
To show the effectiveness of the technique Hyperchaotic Lorentz system and Lu System are
synchronized.

Fig 1 Phase plot of Master and Slave System getting synchronized

Fig 2 Convergence of state estimation error

Fig 1 shows the phase plot of the projective synchronization between hyperchaotic Lorentz sytem and
Lu system. Fig 2 shows the convergence of synchronization error to zero.

3. Synchronization using Sliding mode observer

Sliding mode theory has attracted much attention since its development by the schools of Utkin and
Emilyanov. Sliding mode design consists in defining an attractive manifold and use discontinuous inputs
to steer the systems trajectories to the manifold in finite time. One attractive feature of sliding mode
design is its ability to reject disturbances. Hence Sliding mode technique can be used for the
synchronization of chaotic system having uncertainty [12,13].
2

Consider the uncertain chaotic system

x(t ) Ax(t ) Bf ( x) (t , x)
y Cx

...(1)

where x R n ; A R nn ; B R nm ; C R pn ; y R p
f ( x) : R n R m nonlinear vector function

(t , x) : R R n R n denotes system uncertainties

A robust sliding mode observer is as follows

x Ax (t ) Bf ( x ) G (Cx y ) Bv
GR

n1

...(2)

constant design parameter matrix

v( x , y ) R m is control input
Theorem: If the sliding mode manifold is s(t ) chosen as

s Me FCe Fey F (Cx y )

...(3)

M R mn , F R m p
And the controller is designed as

v vl vn

...(4)

vl f ( x )
vn

( sT MB)T
sT MB

(r1 r2 )

then master system (1) and slave system (2) get synchronized.
The proposed methodology is simulated using a 3rd order chua system.

Fig 3 Sliding surface and the error trajectories

Fig 4 States of Master System and Observer

Fig 3 shows the state estimation error trajectories starting of the sliding surface. The error trajectories
reach the sliding surface in finite time and then gradually move towards origin irrespective of the

disturbance in the system. Fig 4 shows the convergence of the states of observer to the master system
gradually.

4. Nonlinear Unknown Input Observer

x f ( x) (NUIO) design
based on some measurements y g ( x) that

Often, when estimating the state of the system

depend on the stated, one is faced with the presence of unknown inputs or disturbances in the state
space model x f ( x, w) . A standard method in this case is to assume that some model of the
parameter time variation is known ( typically constant w 0 ). Another approach relies on some
geometric properties of the system and output mapping. This property helps to specify observers that
have error dynamics which are completely independent of the unknown input denoted Unknown Input
Observer (UIO) [14,Error! Reference source not found.].
Consider the System

x Ax Bu f ( x) Dv

...(1)

y Cx
where x R n , u R k , v R m , y R P
v is the unknown input vector

f ( x) is any nonlinear function that satisfies the assumption f ( x) f ( x ) x x where is a

positive constant.
Observer structure be taken as

z Nz Gu Ly Mf ( x )
...(2)
x z Ey
State estimation error is defined as e(t ) x x . Now the error dynamics can be written as
e(t ) z Mx
Ne ( NM LC MA) x (G MB)u M ( f ( x ) f ( x)) MDv
Theorem: If there exist matrices E, K and P 0 such that

ECD D
N T P PN PMM T P I 0

...(3)

Then the observer (2) can make state estimation error e(t ) tend to zero asymptotically. Since there is
no systematic way to find these matrices (3) is reformulated as LMI

X X 12
X T I 0
12

where

...(4)

X (( I UC ) A)T P P( I UC ) A (VCA)T Y T Y (VCA) C T K T KC I

X 12 [ P( I UC ) Y (VC )]
Y PY & k PK

Now the problem of E, K , P is now equivalent to finding Y , K & P 0 .

The given technique is tried on the system given as

x Ax Bu f ( x) Dv
y Cx
1 1 0
A 1 0 0
0 1 1

1
B 0 D 0
0

f ( x) 0.5sin( x2 ) 0.6 cos( x3 ) 0

1 0 0
C

0 0 1
v 2sin(5t )

Observer for the system is taken as

z Nz Gu Ly Mf ( x )
x z Ey
The design parameters after solving LMI (4) are obtained as

0
0 0

222.96 0.03
445.3 0

Y 0 1.09 K 0.37 1.09 P 0

0.38
0
0 445.3
0.029 222.96
0
0
445.3
From these matrices values of N , M , L and E are obtained.

Fig 5 State estimation error

Fig 5 Shows the gradual convergence of the state estimation error to zero and hence the effectiveness of
the technique.

Work proposed for the next semester

1. Robust Observer design and application to synchronization
a. Higher Order sliding mode control
2. Observer Based synchronization scheme
a. Using LMI approach

References:
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letters 64.8 (1990), 821-824.
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1998, vol. 57, pp. 7340-7343
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Outbreaks, Ecology Lett., 2001, vol. 4, 229-235.
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Microeconomical Chaos, Chaos, Solitons, Fractals, 1997, vol. 8,1489-1505.
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10. Wenwen, Ranchao, Modified projective synchronization of different-order chaotic systems
with uncertain parameters IEEE Fourth International Workshop on Chaos-Fractals Theories and
Applications, 2011, 221-224.
11. Zhang, Huaguang, et al. "Adaptive synchronization between two different chaotic systems with
unknown parameters." Physics Letters A 350.5 (2006): 363-366.
12. Feng, Yong, Jianfei Zheng, and Lixia Sun. "Chaos synchronization based on sliding mode
observer." Systems and Control in Aerospace and Astronautics, 2006. ISSCAA 2006. 1st
International Symposium on. IEEE, 2006.
13. Dimassi, Habib, Antonio Loria, and Safya Belghith. "An adaptive sliding-mode observer for
nonlinear systems with unknown inputs and noisy measurement." IFAC World Congress, Milan,
Italy. 2011.
14. Chen, Weitian, and Mehrdad Saif. "Unknown input observer design for a class of nonlinear
systems: an LMI approach." American Control Conference, IEEE, 2006.
15. Imsland, Lars, et al. "On non-linear unknown input observersapplied to lateral vehicle velocity
estimation on banked roads." International Journal of Control 80.11, 1741-1750, (2007).
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