On delayed genetic regulatory networks with polytopic uncertainties: Robust stability analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the robust asymptotic stability problem of genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays and polytopic parameter uncertainties. Both cases of differentiable and nondifferentiable time-delays are considered, and the convex polytopic description is utilized to characterize the genetic network model uncertainties. By using a Lyapunov functional approach and linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques, the stability criteria for the uncertain delayed genetic networks are established in the form of LMIs, which can be readily verified by using standard numerical software. An important feature of the results reported here is that all the stability conditions are dependent on the upper and lower bounds of the delays, which is made possible by using up-to-date techniques for achieving delay dependence. Another feature of the results lies in that a novel Lyapunov functional dependent on the uncertain parameters is utilized, which renders the results to be potentially less conservative than those obtained via a fixed Lyapunov functional for the entire uncertainty domain. A genetic network example is employed to illustrate the applicability and usefulness of the developed theoretical results.