Prescribed-Time Stabilization of a Class of Nonlinear Systems by Linear Time-Varying Feedback

This article studies the problem of prescribed-time global stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems, where the nonlinear functions are unknown but satisfy a linear growth condition. By using solutions to a class of parametric Lyapunov equations containing a time-varying parameter that goes to infinity as the time approaches the prescribed settling time, linear time-varying feedback is designed explicitly to solve the considered problem, with the help of a Lyapunov-like function. It is shown moreover that the control signal is uniformly bounded by a constant depending on the initial condition. Both linear state feedback and linear observer-based output feedback are considered. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by a numerical example borrowed from the literature.