Lower bounds and dense discontinuity phenomena for the stabilizability radius of linear switched systems

Abstract: We investigate the stabilizability of discrete-time linear switched systems, when the sole control action of the controller is the switching signal, and when the controller has access to the state of the system in real time. Despite their apparent simplicity, determining if such systems are stabilizable appears to be a very challenging problem, and basic examples have been known for long, for which the stabilizability question is open. We provide new results allowing us to bound the so-called stabilizability radius, which characterizes the stabilizability property of discrete-time linear switched systems. These results allow us to compute significantly improved explicit lower bounds on the stabilizability radius for the above-mentioned examples. As a by-product, we exhibit a discontinuity property for this problem, which brings theoretical understanding of its complexity.