Minimal positive realizations for a class of transfer functions

It is a standard result in linear-system theory that an nth-order rational transfer function of a single-input single-output system always admits a realization of order n. In some applications, however, one is restricted to realizations with nonnegative entries (i.e. a positive system), and it is known that this restriction may force the order N of realizations to be strictly larger than n. In this brief we present a class of transfer functions where positive realizations of order n do exist. With the help of our result we give improvements on some earlier results in positive-system theory.