Stability interval for time-varying delay systems

We investigate the stability analysis of linear time-delay systems. The time-delay is assumed to be a time-varying continuous function belonging to an interval (possibly excluding zero) with a bound on its derivative. To this end, we propose to use the quadratic separation framework to assess the intervals on the delay that preserves the stability. Nevertheless, to take the time-varying nature of the delay into account, the quadratic separation principle has to be extended to cope with the general case of time-varying operators. The key idea lies in rewording the delay system as a feedback interconnection consisting of operators that characterize it. The original feature of this contribution is to design a set of additional auxiliary operators that enhance the system modelling and reduce the conservatism of the methodology. Then, separation conditions lead to linear matrix inequality conditions which can be efficiently solved with available semi-definite programming algorithms. The paper concludes with illustrative academic examples.