Output Feedback Control via Adaptive Observers with Persistency of Excitation

We address the problem of adaptive observer design for nonlinear time-varying systems which can be transformed in the so-called output feedback form (linear in the unmeasured variables). The observer design follows up previous work on adaptive observers for linear systems and has the form of the classical Luenberger observers for linear systems except that the observer gain is time-varying. A specific form of persistency of excitation is imposed to guarantee the convergence of the (state and parameter) estimation errors. As for the output feedback loop, we proceed using a cascade approach, i.e., we impose the appropriate conditions so that the closed loop system has a cascaded structure. Uniform global asymptotic stability may then be concluded based on cascaded systems theory.