A time-periodic sector condition for limit cycle robustness

Existence and robustness of periodic oscillations in autonomous feedback systems are considered for systems with separable nonlinearities. Local quadratic separation of the nonlinear dynamics from the linear part of the dynamics is used to characterize a set of systems that exhibit periodic oscillation in a bounded frequency and amplitude band range. The quadratic constraint is generated as a time-periodic sector condition that characterizes the nonlinearity along a nominal periodic solution. The main analysis condition is formulated as an operator inequality involving the nominal dynamics and the sector constraint. This is an infinite dimensional robustness test that must be truncated to be verified numerically. We discuss two possible ways of performing the analysis.