A low‐dimensional realization algorithm for periodic input/output behavioral systems

Abstract

The state‐space realization of linear systems is of utmost importance in linear systems theory. After the realization problem for the time‐invariant case was solved, particular attention was paid to the case of linear periodic systems. Recently, such systems have regained importance, for instance, in the context of coding theory where periodic convolutional encoders play an important role. The majority of the contributions within this area only concern the realization of transfer functions (or impulse responses), thus excluding the case of input/output linear systems without coprime representations. By the end of the eighties of the last century, Jan C. Willems suggested an approach (nowadays known as the behavioral approach) that considers a wider class of systems and allows to overcome this drawback. According to this approach, the central object in a system is its behavior which consists of all the signals that satisfy the system laws (also called system trajectories). Consequently, the behavior of a system with an input/output representation that is not coprime contains more trajectories than the set of input/output signals defined by the system transfer function. Our work takes this fact into account. In previous research conducted by the authors, some results on the realization of periodic behavioral systems were obtained, which, despite their importance, are conservative with respect to the dimension of the obtained realizations. In this paper, we revisit the behavioral periodic realization problem and give further insight into this question. This allows to derive new results and set up an algorithm to compute low‐dimensional state‐space realizations.