Guide on set invariance for delay difference equations

This paper addresses set invariance properties for linear time-delay systems. More precisely, the first goal of the article is to review known necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the existence of invariant sets with respect to dynamical systems described by linear discrete time-delay difference equations (dDDEs). Secondly, we address the construction of invariant sets in the original state space (also called ^D-invariant sets) by exploiting the forward mappings. The notion of D-invariance is appealing since it provides a region of attraction, which is difficult to obtain for delay systems without taking into account the delayed states in some appropriate extended state space model. The present paper contains a sufficient condition for the existence of ellipsoidal D-contractive sets for dDDEs, and a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of D-invariant sets in relation to linear time-varying dDDE stability. Another contribution is the clarification of the relationship between convexity (convex hull operation) and D-invariance of linear dDDEs. In short, it is shown that the convex hull of the union of two or more D-invariant sets is not necessarily D-invariant, while the convex hull of a non-convex D-invariant set is D-invariant.