IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO.
1, JANUARY 2007
Nonlinear Adaptive Wavelet Control Using
Constructive Wavelet Networks
Jian-Xin Xu, Senior Member, IEEE, and Ying Tan, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, an adaptive wavelet-network-based
control approach is proposed for highly nonlinear uncertain
dynamical systems. Wavelet network, as a kind of universal
approximator, has two novel properties—orthonormality and
multiresolution. The orthonormal property ensures that adding
a new resolution (new wavelets) does not affect the existing
wavelet network that may have been well tuned. In the sequel,
the online adjustment of the structure of the nonlinear adaptive
wavelet controller (AWC) can be done in a constructive manner by
gradually increasing the network resolution. The multiresolution
property, on the other hand, assures a guaranteed improvement
of the approximation precision when a new resolution is added.
In real life problems we are unable to know the adequate size of
a network, either a neural network (NN) or a wavelet network,
to produce the required approximation precision. By virtue of
the novel wavelet network properties, a coarse or very simple
structure can be selected first. If the system fails to converge after
the elapse of a dwell time, a new wavelet resolution is considered
to be necessary and added directly. In this manner, the AWC can
be easily constructed and tuned from the coarse to finer levels
until the performance requirement is satisfied. The trial and error
way of selecting the network structure, which may lead to either
an inadequate or a highly redundant structure, can be avoided. In
this paper, the proposed adaptive wavelet network is applied first
to a class of nonlinear dynamical systems with a partially known
model and an affine-in-input structure. Then, the adaptive wavelet
network is applied to a class of nonlinear nonaffine dynamical
systems.
Index Terms—Adaptive control, multiresolution, online struc-
tural tuning, orthonormality, wavelet network.
I. INTRODUCTION
ANY control systems in practice have either partially
M unknown or completely unknown nonlinearities. Neural
network (NN) is found to be an effective tool to deal with the
control problems of such nonlinear uncertain systems [1]. In the
early stage, NN is used to approximate unknown static nonlin-
earities. Using optimization technique (gradient method), the
parameters (weights) of NN are tuned offline to minimize the
approximation error. A limitation of this approach is its offline
nature. In real time control, it would be hard to continuously
tune NN so as to improve the system performance. Recently,
adaptive neural control was introduced into the control design
for nonlinear systems [2]–[10]. The parameters of NN are tuned
Manuscript received July 2, 2004; revised October 28, 2005.
J.-X. Xu is with Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore (e-mail:
elexujx@nus.edu.sg).
Y. Tan is with Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, The
University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia (e-mail: y.tan@ee.
unimelb.edu.au).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TNN.2006.886759
1045-9227/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
115
online to approximate the unknown nonlinear model with an ap-
propriately chosen adaptive mechanism. Via the Lyapunov’s di-
rect method, it shows that adaptive neural control can guarantee
the stability of closed-loop systems.
It is shown in [3] that the tracking error produced by adaptive
neural control schemes is a direct result of the function approx-
imation error. Therefore, an accurate function approximation
will be the decisive factor for achieving the desired control per-
formance. In the design of an NN, the precision of the function
approximation depends on the selection of the NN structure. It is
proven that an NN is able to approximate any nonlinear function
defined on a compact set to a prespecified accuracy [11]. How-
ever, it is still an open problem in choosing a suitable NN struc-
ture to meet a desired precision specification. Often, a trial and
error method is employed in the structure selection for adaptive
neural control. It is highly desirable, if possible, to tune the NN
structure in an online fashion, so as to improve the precision of
the function approximation. Unfortunately, it is a difficult task
for such an online structure adjustment of NN. Any change of
an NN structure will cause the change of the optimal parameter
set that achieves the universal approximation. Note that an adap-
tive neural controller continuously tunes its adjustable parame-
ters to approach the unknown optimal parameter set. Obviously,
the adaptive neural controller will have to retune its parame-
ters from the moment the unknown system parameter set varies.
This paper will propose an adaptive wavelet controller (AWC),
which can partially overcome the previous difficulty associated
with adaptive neural control.
The AWC design is based on the promising function approx-
imation capability of wavelet networks—the multiresolution
approximation [12], [13]. A wavelet network is a one-layer net-
work consisting of orthonormal “father wavelets” and “mother
wavelets” and widely used as a kind of building blocks for
the approximation of unknown functions. In [14]–[17], the
properties of wavelet networks were discussed and applied to
nonlinear system identification and nonparametric estimation.
It was proven that a wavelet network is a universal approximator
that can approximate any functions with arbitrary precision by a
linear combination of father wavelets and mother wavelets [12].
Comparing with NN, a wavelet network has its own properties.
First, wavelet networks are one-layer networks and linear in
the parameter space. This feature makes the wavelet training
much easier compared to multilayer NNs. Second, unlike NNs
with radial basis functions, wavelet networks use orthonormal
basis in the sequence of subspace of . In particular, the
coefficients needed for reconstructing any function are fixed
and unique. Therefore, it is more suitable for online learning
as the coefficient of each wavelet can be tuned independently
(regardless of the updating process of other wavelets). The
adaptive control approach can be easily applied to wavelet
116
networks. Third, the online structure adaptation requires no
prior knowledge about the smoothness of the function being
approximated, in contrast to many other function approxima-
tion techniques which are strongly dependant on the assumed
smoothness [13]. Last, the multiresolution approximation
guarantees that the modeling precision will be improved as the
wavelet resolution level increases. Owing to multiresolution
and orthonormality of wavelet networks, the approximation
of an unknown nonlinear function can be viewed as the sum
of independent approximations at different resolutions. The
parameter set at the th resolution is unique for a function, no
matter how many new resolutions will be added later to the
wavelet network.
In this paper, the proposed AWC method, which consists of
online structure adjustment and parameter updating, is applied
first to a class of nonlinear dynamic systems with a partially
known structure. The adaptation mechanism deals with para-
metric uncertainties, while the adaptive approximation network
works concurrently to deal with the remainder which is highly
nonlinear and nonparametric. The new method is further ex-
tended to more general classes of nonlinear dynamic systems
with completely unknown and nonaffine structures.
In our new approach, the wavelet network structure is ad-
justed online in a constructive manner according to the control
performance. The AWC begins with a simple structure, which
may achieve only a coarse approximation. If the control per-
formance in a predetermined time interval (the dwell time)
does not meet the tracking specification, a finer resolution
will be introduced to the wavelet network. In terms of the
multiresolution property, the improvement of the control per-
formance is guaranteed when new resolutions are added on
to the existing wavelet network. While the existing parameter
adaptation mechanism still works for the existing resolutions,
a new parameter adaptation mechanism will be activated for
new parameters of the finer resolution. In this way, both the
structure and parameters of the wavelet network are tuned
online continuously, until the desired performance is reached.
Moreover, since the parameter updating is based on the frame-
work of adaptive control theory, the closed-loop stability of
AWC is guaranteed.
In the proposed AWC, we further introduce one more degree
of freedom: the dwell time. This extra degree of freedom is to
allow the “user” to decide and choose their “preference” be-
tween two factors: the convergence speed and controller com-
plexity. In general, the tradeoff between these two factors can
only be made by end users. This is analogous to optimal control
in which the tradeoff has to be made by the “user” between the
tracking performance and control effort.
Now, let us compare the proposed AWC with a few main
stream control approaches: adaptive control, sliding mode
control (SMC), and existing AWC. The difference between
the AWC and existing adaptive control approaches is quite
straightforward. Adaptive control focuses on systems with
parametric uncertainties. The main objective of the AWC is to
deal with systems having nonparametric uncertainties, mean-
while parametric uncertainties can be handled equally well by
the proposed AWC.
The difference between the AWC and the SMC which is a
representative robust control approach, is also clear. The SMC
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007
requires the upper bounding knowledge about the system uncer-
tainties, no matter if it is parametric or nonparametric one. As
we show in the paper, AWC does not require such knowledge in
the affine case. In the nonaffine case, even though a upper bound
is used, the AWC is able to converge to the ideal implicit con-
trol asymptotically, whereas SMC cannot achieve such a perfor-
mance.
Above all, like most existing control approaches, the struc-
ture of the adaptive controller or sliding mode controller cannot
evolve in an online fashion. Such an online structure evolution
seems necessary in dealing with nonparametric uncertainties
when no prior information is available, hence, a designer is un-
able to decide a priori an appropriate compensator structure and
control gains.
The existing AWC [15] did not make full use of the promising
properties of wavelet network; in particular, it did not exploit
the utilization of the multiresolution property of a wavelet
network. In the proposed AWC, it is the multiresolution property
that facilitates a systematic way of online adjustment of the
wavelet network structure,and offers a guaranteed approximation
precision.
The paper is organized as follows. Preliminary on the wavelet
network fundamentals is briefed in Section II. In Section III, the
AWC is proposed for a class of nonlinear dynamic systems
with a partially known structure. In Section IV, the AWC
is extended to a class of nonlinear dynamic systems with a
completely unknown and nonaffine structure. The illustrative
examples are given in Section V. Conclusion is provided in
Section VI.
II. PRELIMINARIES ON WAVELET NETWORKS
Wavelet network is a type of building blocks for function ap-
proximation, developed based on the concept of the multireso-
lution approximation. The building block is formed by shifting
and dilating the basis functions: mother wavelet and father
wavelet . Multiresolution analysis was proposed in [12], which
provides a mathematical tool to describe the “increment in in-
formation” from a coarse approximation to a higher resolution
approximation.
This multiresolution analysis consists of a sequence of suc-
cessive approximation space which satisfies
(1)
span (2)
where is the set of all integers, ,
and . is an orthonormal basis of and is called
scaling function (or father wavelet). Equations (1) and (2) imply
the dilation and shift properties of the space .
XU AND TAN: NONLINEAR AWC USING CONSTRUCTIVE WAVELET NETWORKS 117

For every is defined to be the orthogonal comple- . Then, the -dimensional scaling function
ment of in . At every resolution and mother wavelet can be expressed, respectively, as

if
if where can be either or , but cannot
span (3) all be , as this will duplicate the -dimensional scaling
function . It is worthwhile to point out that the index
where and . is an in (6) becomes a vector for the -di-
orthonormal basis of and is called mother wavelet. For any mensional system.
positive integer , we can obtain Many kinds of orthonormal wavelets are proposed [13] such
as Mayer wavelets, Battle-Lemarié wavelets, and Daubechies
wavelets. Since all those wavelets satisfy multiresolution and
(4) orthonormal properties, the choice of the wavelets will not affect
the results of function approximation and AWC.
Since a wavelet network can approximate unknown function
If , then is to any desired accuracy with an appropriate structure, in this
the approximation at resolution , or a projection of in the paper, the wavelet network will be used to approximate the un-
space of , where is the inner product in . Therefore, known function in the nonlinear dynamic system.
the function can be uniquely approximated in the space
as follows: III. AWC FOR NONLINEAR DYNAMIC SYSTEM WITH A
PARTIALLY KNOWN STRUCTURE
(5) A. Problem Formulation
To clearly illustrate the idea of AWC, in this paper, we first
where is the projection of on the space is the consider a class of single-input–single-output (SISO) nonlinear
approximation error at th resolution including the truncation dynamic systems with a partially known structure, represented
error, and is the number of basis functions used at the by the following equations (throughout this paper, for the sake
th resolution. Note that a larger means a higher resolution of brevity, arguments are sometimes omitted when no confusion
which contains a lower resolution and the complement is likely to arise):
space . Therefore, as tends to be and
. Obviously, from (7)
multiresolution property of wavelet. At the same time, from (3)
and (4), constitutes an orthonormal basis of
. Let the approximation start from the lowest resolution where is the physically measurable state vector
, then, any function in can be uniquely written in of the system (7), is the control input, and
the following form: are compact sets in and , respectively, is a known con-
stant, represents the system component with a partially
known structure—parameter set is unknown and vector-
valued nonlinear continuous functions is known, and
is a completely unknown function, respectively. The dynamic
(6)
system (7) is a normal form [18] of the nonlinear system. Its
physical significance can be easily justified. For instance, the pa-
where and denote the coefficients or weights of the rameterized components can represent the viscous friction with
wavelet network. the coefficient unknown, and the nonparametric components can
For multidimension systems, multidimensional wavelet represent the contacting force between a robot arm and its envi-
series can be constructed from the tensor product of single ronment.
dimensional wavelets. The most frequently used method is Remark 1: The uncertainties in the nonlinear system (7) con-
to form multidimensional mother wavelets by mixing the sist of two types: the parametric uncertainty and the lumped
single dimensional scaling function and wavelet in different uncertainty . Since both and are unknown, an al-
dimensions in the tensor product [12]. In this way, multi- ternative way is to approximate the unknown function
dimensional mother wavelets and scaling function are formed . However, from the viewpoint of the function approxi-
and used in the multidimensional mother wavelet series. With mation, it is not necessary to approximate which is already
this method, a common dilation index can be used in all the known to us. In order words, one should fully make use of the
dimensions for each mother wavelet, whereas the translation prior system information so as to reduce the complexity in func-
index must be independent in different dimensions. tion approximation. In fact, can also be viewed as a set of
Let and be the single dimensional scaling function and basis functions which are chosen according to the system prior
wavelet, respectively, and consider a -dimensional system with knowledge.
118 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

The desired trajectory has continuous derivative where is the projection of on the space is the coarse
up to th order. Let and resolution, , and which
assume that is inside a compact set . Define the implies the truncation at th resolution. Following facts should
filtered tracking error as be noted:

(8)
where is an appropriately chosen coeffi-
From (9), is a truncation error, which satisfies the fol-
cient vector such that the polynomial
lowing:
is a Hurwitz polynomial. The control objective is to find an ap-
propriate control input for the nonlinear uncertain system
(7) to track the desired trajectory with an acceptable preci-
sion bound , i.e.,
(10)
for any integer . For the control purpose the structure of
wavelet networks cannot be infinitely large, the Assumption 1
at the same time, all the closed-loop signals remain bounded. is made.
From (7), the time derivative of the filtered tracking error can Assumption 1: In compact sets and , there exists a fi-
be written as nite but unknown integer such that at the th resolution, the
output of the wavelet network can approximate within the
specified precision bound, i.e.,

If and are known a priori, for a given , the control law

can be designed as

with , where

where and is a positive constant. Conse-

quently, we have

which means the filtered tracking error converges to zero asymp-
totically, i.e., the filtered tracking error will enter the error bound
in a finite time interval. It is a difficult task to find the desired
control input since the parameter set and nonlinear func-
tion are in fact unknown. The proposed controller con-
sists of two parts: One is the classical adaptive control mecha-
nism which deals with , and the other is a “black-box” mech-
anism—wavelet network, which is employed to approximate
. propriate dimension.
B. Design of Control Law
From (5), the unknown function can be represented as
where . In addition, there exists a finite but
unknown constant , such that the following is satisfied:
(11)
where , is a positive–definite matrix with ap-
Remark 2: According to the orthonormal property of wavelet,
tuning the parameters in the space will not affect the param-
eters in the space because the parameter set is
uniquely fixed for every resolution. This unique property lays
the foundation for AWC.
The adaptive wavelet controller can be constructed from
the coarse resolution to finer resolutions satisfying the desired
tracking performance. The proposed adaptive controller with
the structural adaptation law takes the following form:

..
. (12)

(9) (13)
XU AND TAN: NONLINEAR AWC USING CONSTRUCTIVE WAVELET NETWORKS 119

Let , denote the time instants when a

new resolution is added. Since the initial wavelet network struc-
ture consists of and is the initial starting time. For
simplicity, assume . All initial values of the adjustable
round
parameters are set to be zero, i.e.,
sign

Remark 3: Note that and

(14) and the control law (13) is a continuous function along the
time horizon. Hence, the solution of the differential equation (7)
where and are the adaptively adjusted exists and is absolute continuous. Likewise, we can derive
parameters, is the performance evaluation in the time in- that all the adjustable parameters , and
terval for all is a dwell time, are continuous.
represents the needed resolutions of adaptive wavelet net-
work at time instant and round if for C. Convergence Analysis
any integer . The first main result is given in Theorem 1.
Let us see how the AWC updates itself online. In the first Theorem 1: For the dynamic system (7) satisfying Assump-
interval , only the coarse level wavelet network will tion 1 and the controller (12) and (15)–(17), the filtered tracking
be employed. The maximum tracking error is recorded by . error is uniformly bounded. As the resolutions increase from the
If the maximum tracking error can be kept lower than the de- coarse to the finer ones, the tracking error will decrease along
sired precision bound , then we do not need to up- the time horizon and converge to the predefined error bound
date the structure of wavelet network for the next tracking pe- in a finite time interval.
riod . Indeed, in such circumstance, according to the Proof: Define the following piecewise differentiable
structure adaptation laws described by (14), we have quadratic Lyapunov function:
and . On the contrary, if , then the wavelet
network will be updated in the next tracking period ,
as and , i.e., a new resolution
is added. The same updating procedure applies to
all intervals . If the tracking performance with
the present wavelet network, say up to th resolution, is that
is smaller than , there is no need to add any new resolution. (18)
On the other hand, if the tracking performance at the th reso- where
lution level is still not satisfied, in terms of the multiresolution
property, a new resolution can be added and the new set
of parameters are tuned adaptively and concurrently with that (19)
of th resolutions. This process will be repeated
until the desired performance is satisfied. It is worthwhile to point out that all nondifferentiable points
Denoting of will only happen at the time instants
, when a new resolution is added.
The proof consists of two parts. The first is to show the bound-
edness of the when the wavelet network is at any finite res-
olution. The second is to show the finite time convergence of the
filtered tracking error and the states .
the parameters updating rules are Part 1) The boundedness of when is finite. Consider
three cases.
(15) Case 1) . There is only a coarse resolution
in the wavelet network, according to (12); the
(16) derivative of the filtered tracking error can be
represented as
(17)

where and are positive–definite matrices with appropriate

dimensions and is defined in (11). We denote

(20)
120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

If , substituting (20) into the derivative . Accordingly, is bounded by a

of (18), we have constant , and

Case 3) . From Assumption 1,

. For any time instant , we have
(21)

Using the adaptive laws (15)–(17), (21) becomes

When . Therefore, for any
, we have
Noting the following fact:

it is clear that is bounded when .

When , according to the adaptive updating
laws (15)–(17), along the time horizon .
From the previous discussion, it follows that for
any time instant , such
that
..
.

(22)

which is finite.
The filtered tracking error , parameters Part 2) Finite time convergence. If , the number of
and are bounded in the finite time interval resolutions of adaptive wavelet network will approach
because of the boundedness of . infinity because the dwell time is finite. Thus, from (22),
Assume that the desired tracking performance is we have
not satisfied at . At , a new
resolution is added. The Lyapunov
function is discontinuous at . Note
that and are continuous
at and . It follows:

According to Assumption 1, is
bounded by a finite constant . Since
, we have

Since is a constant vector and is a

constant matrix, is also bounded. (23)
Case 2) . When , using
which contradict the positiveness of the Lyapunov func-
the adaptive laws (15)–(17), (21) becomes
tion . Therefore, the filtered tracking error will enter
the bound in a finite time interval, and the parameter
and structure updating will cease afterwards. Clearly, all
adjustable parameters and are bounded by virtue of the
which is bounded. When is zero. boundedness of .
As is always bounded for any , Now, let us derive the boundedness of the state variables.
the Lyapunov function is bounded in Assume that is bounded by a constant . From
XU AND TAN: NONLINEAR AWC USING CONSTRUCTIVE WAVELET NETWORKS 121

(8) and comparison theorem, we have the following re- later. On the other hand, as mentioned in [20], ISS has recently
lation: been proved to be equivalent with stable (“bounded input
implies bounded output”) and stable (“bounded energy of the
input implies bounded energy output”) in an appropriate sense.
(24) Therefore, ISS is not a restrict condition for the dynamic sys-
where tems in real applications.
Assumption 3: It is assumed that
. Hence, it can be deduced that the function
.. is either positive or negative for all . Without
.. .. .. .. .. . the loss of generality, it is assumed that is larger than zero.
. . . . .
Moreover, there exist positive constants , and such that
and , for all .
Remark 6: represents the system gain of the normal
As the polynomial is a Hur- system (25). ensures the system controllability. We
witz polynomial, is a stable matrix. By solving (24), also require the boundedness of . The requirement can be
is bounded. As is bounded, so is . Finally, the easily satisfied since and is at least continuously
boundedness of , and implies the boundedness differentiable.
of the control signal. Since is bounded,
Remark 4: It should be noted that the dwell time plays , where . If the control law is piecewise
an important role in the proposed AWC. If the dwell time is continuous along the time horizon, Dini derivative is employed
sufficiently long, the structure adaptation may stop right at the at the points in which is not continuous.
minimum necessary resolution , hence, avoid any structural The desired trajectory is which is at least th-order
redundancy. If the dwell time is inadequate, more resolu- continuous differentiable.
tions will be incorporated into the wavelet network, hence, lead
to a more complicated structure. Nevertheless, the theoretical B. Existence of the Ideal Implicit Control
results show that, for any finite dwell time, the filtered tracking Analogous to Section IV, define the filtered tracking error
error is guaranteed to enter and stay inside the prespecified error
bound after a finite time interval.

IV. AWC FOR NONLINEAR NONAFFINE DYNAMIC SYSTEMS

A. Problem Formulation
Consider the following class of general SISO nonlinear dy-
namic systems, which is nonaffine in nature
where is an appropriately chosen coef-
ficient vector such that the polynomial
(25)
is a Hurwitz polynomial. Since has continuous derivative
up to th order, is continuous. The control objective is to
where is the physically measurable state vector and find an appropriate control input for the nonlinear system
is the control input. It provides a general description (25) to track the desired trajectory with an acceptable precision
of systems which can capture the nonlinear nature of the input bound
channel, such as the electrical current versus magnetomotive
force in an energy conversion device.
The dynamic system (25) satisfies Assumptions 2 and 3. (26)
Assumption 2: The dynamic system (25) is input-to-state-
stable (ISS) [18].1 In other words, when control input is in- and all the closed-loop signals remain bounded.
side a compact set , the state will stay in a compact set From (25), the time derivative of the filtered tracking error
. Denote . The nonlinear function can be written as
is an unknown function which has at least first deriva-
tives. Furthermore, the solution of (25) exists uniquely for any
.
Remark 5: The ISS assumption is to ensure the existence and
uniqueness of the idea implicit control, which will be explained where is a positive constant satisfying
1The system x_ = f (x; u) is ISS if there exist functions 2 KL 2K and
such that for each bounded input u and each initial condition x(0), the solu-
tion x(t) exists for all t  k
0 and is bounded by x(t) k k k  ( x(0) ; t) + (27)
(sup k k
u( ) ). Here, the continuous function  : R 2 ! R R
is of classKL if it is nondecreasing in its first argument and converging to zero
in its second argument. The continuous function : R ! R is of class and is a positive constant such that . Denote
K if it is strictly increasing and (0) = 0. . Note that
122 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

, using the inverse function theorem [21], for every where . , and are defined the same as in
desired trajectory in a compact subset , there exists a the previous section. In particular
unique local solution such that
holds for all . Therefore, there exists an ideal implicit
control input [9], which can linearize system (25) and satis-
fies

The adaptive controller with structural adaptation is constructed

from the coarse resolution to finer resolutions

If , the filtered tracking error satisfies if

sign else

(30)
which implies . Therefore, the control target
then is to find the control input to track the desired .
It is a difficult task to find the desired control input since
the nonlinear function is unknown. The proposed AWC
is employed once again to approximate the unknown function
. round

C. AWC Design sign

From (5), the unknown function can be represented as

(31)

Note that the structural updating part is analogous to the pre-

vious section.
Denoting and , the parameter
updating rules are

(32)
.. else
.
(33)
else

where and are positive–definite matrices with appro-

(28)
priate dimensions,
where is the projection of on the space is the coarse , and . All initial values of adjustable param-
resolution, and which eters are set to be zero, i.e., and
implies the truncation at th resolution for the -dimensional .
wavelet. From (28), it is obviously that Remark 7: Comparing with AWC of the previous section,
the AWC proposed here has an extra projection operator.
Without such a projection, the existence and uniqueness of
cannot be ensured, let alone the approximation of such
a function .
(29)
For control purpose, the structure of wavelet networks cannot D. Convergence Analysis
be infinitely large; Assumption 4 is made.
Theorem 2 gives the convergence and stability of the pro-
Assumption 4: There exists a finite but unknown integer
posed AWC.
such that at the th resolution or finer one, the approximated
Theorem 2: For the dynamic system (25) satisfying Assump-
control input is sufficiently close to the desired trajectory in the
tions 2–4, with the controller (30), (32), and (33), the filtered
sense that
tracking error is uniformly bounded. As the resolutions in-
crease from the coarse to the finer ones, the tracking error will
converge to the predefined error bound in a finite time in-
terval.
XU AND TAN: NONLINEAR AWC USING CONSTRUCTIVE WAVELET NETWORKS 123

Proof: Define the following piecewise differentiable
quadratic Lyapunov function:
Unlike the previous section, the tracking error
may move in and out the error bound specified
by , since the derivative of Lyapunov function
is not zero in the dead zone specified by .
If , the filtered tracking error can be
rewritten as

(34)
sign
where comes from (19). It should be noted that all the
discontinuous point of will happen at the time instant The finiteness of and warrants the
, when a new resolution is incorporated. boundedness of . From the previous dis-
Analogous to Theorem 1, the proof of Theorem 2 consists of cussion, it follows that for any time instant
two parts. The first shows the boundedness of the , when such that
the wavelet network has a finite resolution. The second shows
the finite time convergence of the filtered tracking error and
the boundedness of all internal variables.
Part 1) Boundedness of when is finite. Consider
three cases.
Case 1) . According to (30), only the coarse
resolution is used. The dynamics of the filtered
tracking error, when , can be represented
as

which implies the boundedness of for all

.
Case 2) . Assume that the tracking
performance does not meet the specification up
to the time instant . At the time instant
where with , a new resolution will be activated. The
. If , piecewise differentiable Lyapunov function
we have is discontinuous at . Note that and
is continuous at and ;
it follows that

(35)
Using the adaptive updating law (32) and (33) and Since is a constant vector and is a con-
condition (27), (35) becomes stant matrix, is bounded because of the
boundedness of . Following the similar
procedure in Theorem 1, the Lyapunov function
is bounded in for any finite .
Accordingly, is bounded by a finite con-
stant .
Case 3) . For any time instant
, the derivative of the piecewise differen-
When for all , tiable Lyapunov function is
therefore, is bounded for all .
When , by differentiating (35) along the
time horizon
When . Note that

; according to (32)
124 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

and (27), we have Part 2) Finite time convergence and boundedness of internal
variables. Analogous to Part 2) of Theorem 1, if
, the number of resolutions of the adaptive wavelet
network will approach infinite, i.e., . From (34)
and (40), analogous to (23), we can derive

which contradicts the fact that must be positive as

(36) the piecewise differentiable Lyapunov function. There-
fore, after finite times moving in and out, the tracking
error will finally enter and stay in the region specified
Since can be any positive integer, thus we can by . At the same time, all the adjustable parameters
replace in (36) by and obtain a similar and are bounded from the boundedness of . From
relationship the proof of Theorem 1, the boundedness of the states
are ensured.
Remark 8: As , an SMC law
can ensure the stability of the closed-loop
system, however, with discontinuous control input, chattering
(37) performance and the high-gain control input. In the AWC de-
sign, the high-gain controller is only employed when the state
is outside the compact set . If the state is inside the compact
Substituting (37) into (36) yields set, a controller with a lower gain in terms of AWC takes effect
and brings the filtered tracking error inside the desired bound.

V. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES
Consider two cases.
(38) Case 1) System with partially known structure. The system is

Repeating the same procedure for and

, leads to
where and

(39)

The desired trajectory is and the fil-

From (33), it is obviously that tered tracking error is , where
and . A uniform
dwell time of 400 s is used and the error bound is set to
be 0.015. The orthonormal wavelets employed in
the AWC is the Daubechies wavelet (db3) with
Therefore, (39) can be rewritten as [two-dimensional (2-D) wavelet]; the coarse resolution
is , and doubles when resolution
increases by 1. The classical adaptive control scheme is
first applied without taking consideration of the unstruc-
tured uncertainty . This results
(40) in an unstable control performance. Next, the proposed
AWC is applied. The tracking performance of the dy-
namic system is shown in Fig. 1. From the figure, we can
for all . see that the maximum tracking error is above 0.015
XU AND TAN: NONLINEAR AWC USING CONSTRUCTIVE WAVELET NETWORKS
Fig. 1. Filtered tracking error of Case 1).
for the first three dwell periods, hence, three more reso-
lutions are added. When the resolution equals 6,
the tracking error enters the predefined the error bound
and the updating of the parameter and structure cease
accordingly.
Case 2) Nonaffine system. Now, we consider the following non-
linear nonaffine dynamic system which is constructed as
where . The desired trajectory is
which is a smooth function.
The orthonormal wavelets employed in the AWC is the
db3 with (2-D wavelet), the coarse layer is
chosen to be 5, , and doubles when in-
creases by 1. A uniform dwell time of 20 s is used and
the error bound is set to be 0.05. The error profile
is shown in Fig. 2.
From the figure, when the resolution equals 13,
the tracking error enters the predefined the error bound
and the updating of the parameter and structure cease
accordingly.
A) Discussions on Dimensionality: In previous examples,
the system dimension is . When the system dimension
is larger than 2, the wavelet network may encounter the problem
of curse of dimensionality, because the number of wavelets will
increase exponentially with the dimension. As a matter of fact,
this problem exists for all kinds of control tasks based on func-
tion approximation, especially when the required control preci-
sion is high.
125
Theoretically, what a wavelet network provides is a sufficient
structure that guarantees the approximation precision, instead
of a necessary structure. The classical way of structural expan-
sion with multiresolution is more on the worst case, that is, an
extreme scenario without any prior knowledge on the plant, and
higher order resolution could be required anywhere in the state
space. Indeed, we cannot rule out such a possible scenario that
all the wavelets, no matter how huge the number is, are indis-
pensable to approximate a nonlinear function to the specified
precision.
A question that follows is whether we can find the minimum
necessary structure associated with a given class of functions.
Up to now, there was neither mathematical theory nor system-
atic approach that could help us find such a necessary structure.
In this sense, the curse of dimensionality problem will last in
the field of function approximation, and it is unlikely for us to
easily find a solution to such a fundamental issue. Nevertheless,
one thing is for sure that the proposed AWC scheme can incor-
porate any new results from the wavelet theory to minimize the
controller structure, if a minimum necessary structure can be
found by mathematicians in the future.
In the field of control engineering, what we can do is to use
our engineering knowledge and approaches to partially mitigate
the dimensional problem. In practical applications, we are not
completely unaware of the control task and the plant charac-
teristics. With such information, the dimension of the systems
could be reduced by means of an appropriate model reduction
method. Moreover, using domain knowledge such as the pos-
sible region of state variables, the possible classes of the non-
linear functions, we can limit the region and choose appropriate
wavelets, hence greatly reducing the dimensions of wavelet net-
126
Fig. 2. Filtered tracking error of Case 2).
work. Dynamic pruning [21] can also be used as a complemen-
tary to other dimension reduction methods, by removing the re-
dundant wavelets which are inactive, such as those always with
very low values of coefficients. Based on the constraints of com-
putation power, we can also give a cap on the maximum number
of wavelets admissible for each resolution. In both examples,
we apply a cap of 1000 wavelet to each layer. Except for very
stiff problems, such a simple rule does work for many prob-
lems. A longer dwell time can fully embrace the power of adap-
tation; hence, it may help reduce the number of resolutions. In
our future work, more will be exploited on how to deal with the
problem of curse of dimensionality, such as finding the type of
wavelets more suited to control tasks, etc.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new control approach based on the construc-
tive wavelet network, the AWC, was proposed. The unique fea-
ture of the AWC is to adaptively adjust both the control param-
eters and structure concurrently in closed-loop. Based on the
orthonormality and multiresolution properties of wavelet net-
works, the online structure tuning does not affect the param-
eter adaptation, and meanwhile ensures a sufficiently high ap-
proximation precision. A coarse adaptive wavelet controller can
be constructed first with a simple structure. The control perfor-
mance is evaluated within a specified dwell time. If the tracking
performance requirement during the dwell time is not satisfied, a
new wavelet resolution is considered to be necessary and added
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007
directly. When the wavelet network goes to finer resolutions, the
bound of tracking error will keep decreasing till reaching the de-
sired control performance. In this way, we can avoid an initial
trial-and-error selection of the network structure. Two classes of
nonlinear uncertain dynamical systems are taken into consider-
ation. By means of the Lyapunov direct method, the stability is
assured when the closed-loop system undergoes parametric and
structural changes concurrently.
Among numerous open problems to be challenged in our fu-
ture research work, we will concentrate on three major issues:
nonexpansion of the compact set , state estimation, and exten-
sion to higher dimension systems with the consideration of the
curse of dimensionality problem.
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127
Jian-Xin Xu (M’92–SM’98) received the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versity of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1986 and 1989,
respectively.
He was a Research Engineering at the Hitachi
Research Laboratory, a Visiting Scholar at the Ohio
State University, and a Visiting Research Fellow
at Yale University. In 1991, he joined the National
University of Singapore, Singapore, where he is
currently an Associate Professor at the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is
the author or coauthor of more than 110 peer-reviewed journal papers, 190
peer-refereed conference papers, one monograph, and three edited books on
system modeling and control. He was a Principal or Coprincipal Investigator
for 13 research projects. His research interests are in system learning, control,
and applications to real time systems.
Ying Tan (M’04) received the B.S. degree from
Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, in 1995 and the
Ph.D. degree from the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department, National University of
Singapore, Singapore, in 2002.
In 2002, she joined the Department of Chemical
Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON,
Canada, as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Currently, she
is a Research Fellow in the Department of Elec-
trical and Electronic Engineering, the University
of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Her research
interests are in learning systems, nonlinear systems, model predictive control,
real time optimization, and system modeling. Currently, she is an Australian
Postdoctoral Fellow (2006–2009), a research position which is funded by the
Australian Research Council.