Invariant codistributions and the feedforward form for discrete-time nonlinear systems

The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, given an arbitrary n-dimensional discrete-time nonlinear dynamical system, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a one-dimensional invariant codistribution are obtained. Second, it is shown that the previous conditions can be used iteratively to obtain a nested sequence of n invariant codistributions with the properties that each codistribution contains the previous one and the last one coincides with the cotangent bundle of the state manifold. As a byproduct, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for a discrete-time nonlinear dynamical system to be equivalent to the so-called feedforward form. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.