ThP07.

Proceeding of the 2004 American Control Conference

Boston, Massachusetts June 30 - July 2, 2004

State and Input Estimation for Descriptor Systems

with Unknown Inputs
Sun Liying and Cheng Zhaolin

Abstract The problem of inputs decoupled observer design for linear descriptor systems with unknown inputs was
considered.When the system was impulsively controllable,
an equivalent standard state space system was derived by
regarding the partial state as unknown input.The sufficient
conditions for the existence of the observer and simple method
to design the observer are given.
Index Terms unknown input,descriptor systems, state and
input estimation, input-decoupled.

I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, a great deal of work has been devoted to the
observer design for standard systems and descriptor systems
with unknown inputs[1], however few results have been
presented to estimate unknown inputs. In [2] the observer
contains output derivative of system, so it is essentially
sensitive to noise. Although the observer dont contain
output derivative of system, its output can not gradually
estimate unknown inputs of system in [3]. In [4] observer
for descriptor systems has been developed, however when
the descriptor systems are not square, the work is less [5].
In this paper, we design an input-decoupled observer for
descriptor systems that are not square with unknown inputs,
and asymptotically estimate the state and unknown inputs
of the descriptor systems using the state of observer and
output of systems.
II. OBSERVER DESIGN AND ESTIMATION OF
UNKNOWN INPUTS
Consider the descriptor system

E x = Ax + Bu + Dd
y = Cx + F d

(1)

where E, A Rmn , B Rmk , C Rqn , D

Rmp , F Rqp are known constant matrices; x, y, u, d
represent the state, output, control input and unknown input
respectively; E is singular matrix with 0 < rankE = r <
min{m, n}. Without loss of generality,we assume m < n.
To design observer we assume
that

0 E 0
(A1) rank
=m+r
E A D
This work was supported by the project 973 of China under grant
G1998020300
L. Sun is with the School of Science, Jinan University, Jinan, 250022,
P.R. China sunliying66@beelink.com
Z. Cheng is with the School of Mathematics and System Sciences,
Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, P.R. China Chengzha@jn-

public.sd.cninfo.net

0-7803-8335-4/04/$17.00 2004 AACC

0 E 0
(A2) rank E A D = n + p + r
0 C F
A sE D
(A3) rank
= n + p, s C, Res 0
C
F
where C denotes complex domain.
These conditions are not restrictive. The assumption
(A1) is equivalent to impulse controllable of the system
(E, A, D). The assumption (A2) implies the unknown input
dimension of the descriptor systems [E, A, D, C] is less
than its output dimension when m < n, if m = n, then the
systems(1) becomes descriptor square systems,the assumption (A2) implies the output dimension of the descriptor
systems is not less than its unknown input dimension[4].
The assumption (A3) is equivalent to that the invariant zeros
of the system (E, A, D, C) are stable.
Without loss of generality,we assume (1) as

x 1 = A1 x1 + A2 x2 + B1 u + D1 d
0 = A3 x1 + A4 x2 + B2 u + D2 d
(2)

y = C1 x1 + C2 x2 + F d.
where x1 Rr , x2 Rnr .
It is well known (A1) is equivalent to that [A4 , D2 ] has
full row rank, so there exists nonsingular matrix P , such that
[A4 D2 ]P = [I
0(mr)p ].
(mr)(mr) 0(mr)(nm)

P11 P12 P13

Denote P =
. Take the nonsingular
P21 P22 P23
transformation

x1
x1
Ir
0
0
0
0
21
x2 0 P11 P12 P13 0 x

=
x

d 0 P21 P22 P23 0 22 (3)

d
u
0
0
0
0 Ik
u
then the system (2)

x 1
x
21

is transformed into the system

=
=
=

1 u + W1 w
A1 x1 + B
A3 x1 B2 u
2 u + W2 w
C1 x1 + B

(4)

where x
21 Rmr , x
22 Rnm , A1 = A1 A21 A3 ,

B1 = B1 A21 B2 , C1 = C1 C21 A3 , B
2 = C21 B2 ,
22
1 ], W2 = [C22 , F ], w = x
W1 = [A22 , D
.
d
Remark 1: The system (4) is a standard state space
system. So, the problem of observer design for descriptor
system (1) with unknown inputs d is transformed into the
same problem for standard state space system (4) with
unknown inputs w.

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Lemma 1: (A2) is equivalent to rankW2 = n m + p.

So we can obtain
2 u).
w = W2+ (y C1 x1 B

(5)

where W2+ is Penrose-Moore inverse of W2 .Then the system (4) is transformed into the system

1 u + W1 W + y
x 1 = A1 x1 + B
2
x
21 = A3 x1 B2 u
(6)

2 u
y = C1 x1 + B
1 = B
1 W1 W + B
2 ,
where A1 = A1 W1 W2+ C1 , B
2
+
+

2 =
y = (Iq W2 W2 )y, C1 = (Iq W2 W2 )C1 , B
+
(Iq W2 W2 )B2 .
Remark 2: In the system (6), the state is x1 , inputs
are u and y, output is y, u is control input, y and y
is measurable. So inputs and output of the system(6) are
known, its observer exists if and only if the pair [A1 , C1 ]
is detectable.
Lemma 2: Assume (A1)(A3) hold, then the pair
[A1 , C1 ] is detectable.
Theorem 1: Assume (A1)(A3) hold, then the observer
of system (6) exists. An observer of full order is given by

1 LB
2 )u
z
= (A1 LC1 )z + (B

+(W1 W2+ + L(Iq W2 W2+ ))y

x

= z

1
x
21 = A3 z B2 u
where A1 LC1 has eigenvalues with negative real parts.
2 u,
So we have w
= W2+ y W2+ C1 x
1 W2+ B

22 = [Inm 0]w,
x
d = [0 Ip ]w.

From (3), (4)and (5), we can obtain

x2
= R1 x1 + R2 u + R3 y
d
where

P11 A3 (P12 , P13 )W2+ C1

R1 =

P21 A3 (P22 , P23 )W2+ C1

2
P11 B2 (P12 , P13 )W2 B
R2 =
+

P21 B2 (P+22, P23 )W2 B2

(P12 , P13 )W2

R3 =
(P22 , P23 )W2+

Theorem 2: Assume (A1)(A3) hold, then the input-state

observer of system (1) is given by

Re(H) < 0
z = Hz + J1 u + J2 y,
x
= Kz + T1 u + T2 y

d = Gz + Q1 u + Q2 y
where
1 LB
2 ,
H = A1 LC1 , J1 = B
+
J2 = W1W2+ + L(Iq W
W
2 2 ),

Ir
0
K=N
, T1 = N
,
(Inr , 0)R2
(Inr , 0)R1
0
T2 = N
, G = [0, Ip ]R1 ,
(Inr , 0)R3
Q1 = [0, Ip ]R2 , Q2 = [0, Ip ]R3 .

III. EXAMPLE
Consider the descriptor system

1 0 0 0
1 0

0 1 0 0
0 1
=

0 0 0 0 2
0 2

1 0
1

+ 1 0 u + 0 d

0 1

0
1
1
0
1

2 0 1 1
1
y
=
+

x2

1 1 0 1
0

1
0
1

0
x1
1
x2
1

where x1 R2 , x2 R2 .
It is simply known that (A1)(A3)
are satisfied,
by
2

3 13 13
+
calculating, we have W2 =
, so the
1
1
0
system is transformed into

2
13
1 0

x1 +
u
x 1 =

4
2

3 2 3 1
1 0

3
3

+
y

2
13 13
3
x
21 =
[0 2]x1 [0

1]u

2
1

3
3

23 x1
y = 13

2
13
3

Note that, in this example, the
pair [A1 ,C1 ] is detectable,
0 6 1
we can choose matrix L =
such that A1
6 2 0
LC1 has eigenvalues 1 and 2. So the input-state observer
of the system is:

1 3
1 0
1 2 2
z =
z+
u+
y
0 2
1 0
1 1 2
1
0
0
0 0
0 0
0

0 0
0
1
0 0
z +

y
x
=
2
0 1 u + 1
1
1 0
0 0
4 1
13 13 23
5 34 3

d = 3 3 z + 0 1 u + 3 23 13 y
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we present a simple design method of
an input-decoupled observer for descriptor systems with
unknown inputs. The existent conditions of the observer
are given, and we give the gradually estimation of state and
unknown inputs.
R EFERENCES
[1] M. Hou and P. C. Muller, Disturbance Decoupled Observer Design:
A Anified Viewpoint, IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr., vol. 39, no. 6,
1994, pp. 1338-1341.
[2] M. Hou and R.J. Patton, Input Observability and Input Reconstruction, Automat., Vol. 34, no.6, 1998, pp. 789-794.
[3] M. Corless and J. Tu, State and Input Estimation for A Class of
Uncertain System, Automat., Vol. 34, no. 6, 1998, pp. 757-764.
[4] S. Zhu, L. Sun and Z. Cheng, Input Estimation for Uncertain Linear
Singular Systems and Robust Stabilization, in Proc. 40th IEEE CDC,
Orlando,USA , 2001, pp. 2856-2857.
[5] M. Darouach, M.Zasadzinski and M. Hayar, Reduced-Order Observer Design for Descriptor Systems with Unknown Inputs, IEEE
Trans. Automat. Contr., Vol. 41, No. 7, 1996, pp. 1068-1072.

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