Structural Properties and Main Approaches to Checking Them

Abstract

It is appropriate to define the structural properties we are concerned with more precisely After having stated what we mean by the structure of a matrix, and linked the notion of a structural property to that of genericity, we shall recall the definitions of various structural properties: connectability, controllability, observability and identifiability. We shall see that close but complex links exist between these properties, before examining the main approaches available in the literature for checking them. This will enable us to raise some open questions, and to put in proper perspective the methods to he proposed not only in this chapter for checking structural observability and structural controllability when constraints exist on the nonzero entries of A, B and C, but also in the following chapters for checking structural identifiability.