Ricerc@Sapienza

In some applications one is interested in having a state–space realization with nonnegative matrices (positive realization) of a given transfer function and it is known that such a realization may have a dimension strictly larger than the order of the transfer function itself. Moreover, in most cases, it is desirable to have a realization with minimal dimension. Unfortunately, it is not known, to date, how

In some applications, one is interested in having a state–space realization with nonnegative matrices (positive realization) of a given transfer function and it is known that such a realization may have a dimension strictly larger than the order of the transfer function itself. The aim of this letter is to provide a lower bound on the minimum dimension of a positive realization taking into account some spectral properties of nonnegative matrices.