1. Introduction
A polynomial 
 with real coefficients is called Schur stable if all its roots lie in the open unit disc of the complex plane. Schur stability is very important in the investigation of discrete-time systems. One of the ways to investigate of Schur stability is the use of the well-known bilinear transformation between the open left half plane and the open unit disc. By using this transformation, the Schur stability problem of a given system can be transformed into Hurwitz stability problem of transformed polynomial (Recall that a system is called Hurwitz stable if all roots of its characteristic polynomial belong to the open left half plane) [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5].
Each polynomial 
 corresponds to an 
n-dimensional vector 
. The vector 
p is called stable if the corresponding monic polynomial 
 is Schur stable. Denote the set of such stable vectors by 
. In other words 
  The polynomial 
 is Schur stableg}. It is well-known that the set 
 is non-convex for 
 and open. The closed convex hull of 
 is a polytope [
6,
7].
Many stabilization problems of discrete-time systems by feedback controller can be reduced to the following: Consider a family
      
      where 
, 
  and 
. Find 
l-dimensional vector 
 such that the corresponding polynomial 
 is Schur stable. In this case, the vector 
c is called a stabilizing vector. The polynomial equality (1) can be written in vector-matrix form as follows. Consider column vectors 
 where 
 corresponds to 
 and 
  correspond to 
 with the property that added zero component have dimension 
n. For instance, assume 
 and 
. Then 
, 
.
Define 
 dimensional matrix 
. Then relation (1) can be written in vector-matrix form as follows:
The stabilization problem is the determination of a parameter  with the property that , namely, find conditions under which , where  is an affine subset of .
In [
8,
9] for determination of a stabilizing parameter 
 the method of random generation of stable vectors and stable segments are suggested. In [
10], for stabilization of continuous-time systems part of specially selected parameters are chosen randomly and another part deterministically. The combination of sum of square and linear matrix inequalities techniques for approximation of the set of stabilizing controllers for continuous time system has been considered in [
11]. For such systems, a linear programming approach is considered in [
12]. Stabilizing controls based on matrix inequalities have been considered in [
13,
14,
15].
In this paper, we consider the problem of existence of an affine controller for discrete-time systems. In 
Section 2, we give a simple condition for the existence of a stabilizing parameter 
c. In 
Section 3, the Euclidean distance between the sets 
 and 
 is investigated, from which some existence and nonexistence conditions are obtained.
  3. Schur-Szegö Parameters and Polynomial Optimization
Schur-Szegö parameters [
17] or reflection coefficients are widely used in the stability problems of discrete time systems. Let us briefly recall these coefficients. In [
18], for 
 (
) the reflection map 
 is defined recursively:
      where 
, 
 is 
 unit matrix and, 
 is 
 dimensional, defined by
      
In the above formula, the first zero is n-dimensional, whereas the last is one-dimensional. The above formula gives
for 
,
      
      for 
,
      
     and so on. The polynomial 
 is Schur stable if and only if 
 for all 
. The map 
 between the reflection vector 
 and the coefficient vector 
 is multilinear. By known property of multilinear maps [
1] (p. 435) namely, the convex hull of the image of a multilinear map defined on a box 
Q is equal the convex hull of the images of vertices of 
Q. In [
6], it has been proven that there is no need to take all vertices of 
Q, the convex hull of the image of 
f is a polytope, whose vertices correspond to the 
 polynomials for which zeros are equal to 
 or 1.
By using Schur-Szegö parameters, we can generate an arbitrary number of Schur stable polynomials: For this purpose it is sufficient to choose any vector  and find the image . The obtained vector  is stable.
Consider the distance function between the sets  and . Recall that  is closed affine set whereas  is an open set. We show that the distance function between them is n-variable polynomial with total degree . The variables of this polynomial are Schur-Szegö parameters . We consider the minimization of this polynomial over the closed cube  and use the Bernstein expansion for the outer approximation of the range.
Consider the number
      
      where 
, 
A is 
 matrix with column vectors 
, 
i.e., 
, 
 is the Euclidean norm of 
x, 
f is multilinear reflection map.
Theorem 3.  The equalityis satisfied.  Proof.  Write
      
      where 
.
 Define 
l-dimensional subspace 
. Then 
 is the distance from the point 
y to 
W. By the well-known theorem of functional analysis [
19], the nearest point 
 exists and satisfies 
, where 
 means 
 for all 
 and the symbol 
 stands for the scalar product.
Since 
, where 
, where 
, we have
      
The matrix 
 is nonsingular. By contradiction, assume that there exists nonzero 
 such that 
. Then
      
      and 
. The last equality contradicts to the linear independence of 
. Therefore 
 and
      
      and the equality (6) follows.   □
Proposition 4.  If  then there is no stabilizing parameter c.
 If  then  and either there exists a stabilizing parameter c or there is no stabilizing parameter c, but there exists a parameter c such that  is marginally stable, i.e., has all roots in the closure of the open unit disc. It should be noted that the last case is rather a pathological than a typical one.
The function 
 is a multivariable polynomial defined on the box 
. The range 
 can be estimated by the Bernstein expansion. Let us briefly describe this expansion for 
n-variate polynomials [
20].
An 
n-variate polynomial 
 is defined as
      
      where 
, 
, 
 and
      
The 
Lth Bernstein polynomial of degree 
d is defined by
      
      where 
. The transformation of a polynomial from its power from (7) into its Bernstein form result in
      
      where the Bernstein coefficients 
 of 
v over the 
n-dimensional unit box 
 are given by
      
Here  is defined as .
Theorem 5.  [20] The following inequalitiesare satisfied.  Theorem 5 gives outer approximation of the range of  over the unit box U.
In order to obtain the Bernstein coefficients and bounds over an arbitrary box D rather the unit box U, the box D should be affinely mapped onto U. To obtain convergent bounds for the range of the polynomial (7) over the box U, the box U should be divided into small boxes.
If  () then the polynomial is positive (negative) on U. If ,  then by the bisection in the chosen coordinate direction, the box U is divided into two boxes. A new box on which the inequality  or  is satisfied should be eliminated, since our polynomial has constant sign on this box. Otherwise, the box should be divided into two new boxes.
If at some step of the Bernstein expansion the lower bound is positive then  and  and there is no stabilizing c. If this is not the case, an additional investigation on existence is required.
Taking into account the definition of α and Proposition 4, we can suggest the following algorithm for a stabilizing vector.
Algorithm 6.  - (1)
- Given family (1), explicitly calculate the multivariable polynomial . 
- (2)
- Calculate step-by-step the Bernstein coefficients for the function  over the box . If at some step, the minimal Bernstein coefficient is positive then stop, there is no stabilizing parameter c. 
- (3)
- If after a sufficiently large number of steps the lower Bernstein coefficient remains negative, then stop and carry out an additional test for the existence of a stabilizing vector c. A cycling of the calculation indicates the existence of a stabilizing parameter. In this case, we can proceed to a random search if number of remaining boxes is small. For example, choose the center point  of a remaining box, calculate  and test  for a stabilizing vector, i.e., test Schur stability of . Alternatively, the gradient minimization method of the smooth function  could be applied. 
 Example 3.  Consider stabilizing problem for the following polynomial family:
      
 The matrix 
A (see (2)) and the vector 
 are
      
      and we have
      
When Algorithm 6 is applied, 477 subboxes remained at the end of 1000 steps after 48 seconds. Consider one of these subboxes:
	  
The center of this subbox is 
 and the corresponding 
 can be calculated as
      
The corresponding polynomial  is Schur stable, i.e.,  is a stabilizing vector.
Example 4  (There is no stabilizing 
c) Consider the family
      
 Here ,  and . The polynomial  is 5-variate quadratic polynomial. We apply the Bernstein expansion, splitting-elimination procedure and after 698 steps (during  second) conclude that  on . Therefore, there is no stabilizing parameter c.
Example 5.  Let the control system shown in the 
Figure 1 be given. Assume that transfer function and controller are
      
 The characteristic polynomial of the closed-loop system becomes
      
Let . We apply Algorithm 6, part 2 and after 3726 steps conclude that there is no stabilizing parameter c.
Let 
. In this case, Algorithm 6 applied to the problem of stabilization does not give a negative result after 20000 steps with 6538 subboxes, and
      
      is one of them. The center of this subbox is 
 and calculations give 
. Since the polynomial 
 is Schur stable, 
 is a stabilizing vector.
Remark 1.  Here, we indicate advantages and disadvantages of our results given in this paper. Firstly, note that Proposition 1 has a simple form. On the other hand the results existing in the literature on the existence and evaluation of Schur stable element in an affine polynomial family are mainly random search methods (see [
9] and references therein). Algorithm 6 gives an answer when there does not exist a stabilizing parameter; however, it gives a useful hint as to whether such a parameter exists. The main setback of Algorithm 6 is that high-dimensional systems require long calculations.