Average dwell time based stability analysis for nonautonomous continuous-time switched systems

Inspired by the idea of multiple Lyapunov functions and the average dwell time, we address the stability analysis of nonautonomous continuous-time switched systems. First, we investigate nonautonomous continuous-time switched nonlinear systems and successively propose sufficient conditions for their (uniform) stability, global (uniform) asymptotic stability, and global (uniform) exponential stability, in which an indefinite scalar function is utilized to release the nonincreasing requirements of the classical multiple Lyapunov functions. Afterwards, by using multiple Lyapunov functions of quadratic form, we obtain the corresponding sufficient conditions for (uniform) stability, global (uniform) asymptotic stability, and global exponential stability of nonautonomous switched linear systems. Finally, we consider the computation issue of our current results for a special class of nonautonomous switched systems (ie, rational nonautonomous switched systems), associated with two illustrative examples.