On the preservation of co-positive Lyapunov functions under Padé discretization for positive systems

In this paper the discretization of switched and non-switched linear positive systems using Padé approximations is considered. We show: 1) first order diagonal Padé approximation preserves both linear and quadratic co-positive Lyapunov functions, higher order transformations need an additional condition on the sampling time1; 2) positivity need not be preserved even for arbitrarily small sampling time for certain Padé approximations. Sufficient conditions on the Padé approximations are given to preserve positivity of the discrete-time system. Finally, some examples are given to illustrate the efficacy of our results