State-Space System Descriptions

Abstract

The 1960s and 1970s saw a return from the transfer-function approach to differential-equations. Usually engineers would avoid such approaches but this was not just ODEs in the classical sense, that is to say, solving countless such equations of differing types using a variety of mathematical methods. This was a special class of ODE, a vector-based approach that had nicely formed solutions that made sense from the point of view of engineering. The motivating factors were as follows. Engineers needed to be able to cope with multiple-input, multiple-output systems (Multivariable). Such systems arose in aircraft and missile-systems and even the space-race.