Commutativity of First-order Discrete-Time Linear Time-varying Systems

Abstract: After introducing the concept of commutativity for continuous-time linear time-varying systems, the related literature and the results obtained so far are presented. For a simple introduction of the commutativity of discrete-time linear time-varying systems, the problem is formulated for first-order systems. Finally, explicit necessary and sufficient conditions for the commutativity of first-order discrete-time linear time-varying systems are derived, and their advantageous use in digital system design is illustrated; which are the main objectives of the paper. The results are verified by examples which include an application in amplitude modulation for digital telecommunication.