Discrete-time robust backstepping adaptive control for nonlinear time-varying systems

This paper studies the problem of adaptive control for a class of nonlinear time-varying discrete-time systems with nonparametric uncertainties. The plant parameters considered here are not necessarily slowly time-varying in a uniform way. They are allowed to have a finite number of big jumps. By using the backstepping procedures with parameter projection update laws, a robust adaptive controller can be designed to achieve adaptive tracking of a reference signal for this class of systems. It is shown that the proposed controller can guarantee the global boundedness of the states of the whole adaptive system in the presence of parametric and nonparametric uncertainties. It can also ensure that the tracking error falls within a compact set whose size is proportional to the size of the uncertainties and disturbances. In the ideal case when there is no nonparametric uncertainties and time-varying parameters, perfect tracking can be achieved.