Robustness with respect to small delays for exponential stability of non-autonomous systems

Robustness of stability with respect to small delays, e.g., motivated by feedback systems in control theory, is of great theoretical and practical important, but this property does not hold for many systems. In this paper, we introduce the conception of robustness with respect to small time-varying delays for exponential stability of the non-autonomous linear systems. Sufficient conditions are given for the non-autonomous systems to be robust, and examples are provided to illustrate that the conditions are satisfied for a large class of the non-autonomous parabolic systems.  2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.