Abstract:

The use of orthogonal functions to analyse the structure of a system is investigated. Applying the definitions of observability and controllability to a system that is approximated with the help of orthogonal functions, it is shown that the concepts of the state space and the space of orthogonal functions are equivalent, provided that two weak conditions are met. This result ensures that the observability and controllability properties remain invariant under the transformation introduced by the approximation. Furthermore, new criteria to test observability and controllability are given in terms of the coefficient matrix of the orthogonal expansion. Because this test does not require the knowledge of the system matrices A, B and C, the results derived may be used for the identification of systems. It is demonstrated that all the results obtained remain true, even for an approximation with low accuracy. These properties allow the application of orthogonal functions for the analysis of systems