Delayed output feedback of discrete-time time-delay systems with applications to spacecraft rendezvous

This work studies the delayed output feedback (DOF) of discrete-time systems with input and output delays that are arbitrarily large, bounded, and exactly known. The significance of the DOF is that only the present and delayed inputs and outputs are used for feedback. For systems with a single input delay and multiple output delays, the idea of state prediction is utilised to construct the DOF controller. While for systems with multiple input and output delays, the DOF controller is designed by firstly reducing the original system to a delay-free one. It is shown in both cases that the closed-loop systems controlled by DOF are asymptotically stable and act like delay-free systems with the same dimensions as open-loop systems. Compared with the continuous-time case, the DOF controllers for discrete-time systems do not contain distributed delay terms and the implementation problems can be avoided. The DOF is used to stabilise the spacecraft rendezvous system with input and output delays and simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.