Stability analysis of sampled-data systems considering time delays and its application to electric power markets

This paper investigates the stability of linear control systems with aperiodic sampled data and communication delays. A systematic analysis method is presented and then it is applied to an electric power market. Firstly, the sampled-data system is transformed into a system with a special time-varying delay via the input delay method. Secondly, a less conservative stability criterion is derived based on Lyapunov theory. Several augmented terms and an extra integral term are introduced during the constructing of candidate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF); and an improved free-weighting matrix approach is used to handle with the LKF itself and its derivative for obtaining the relaxed conditions ensuring the positive and decreasing requirements of the LKF. The benefit of those treatments on the conservativeness-reducing is analyzed and verified based on a simple numerical example. Finally, the application of the proposed method to a simplified electric power market is investigated, including modeling the system with market clearing time and communication delay, and determining the stability region. The application also shows the practical significance of the reducing of the conservativeness.