Model reduction of nonsquare linear MIMO systems using multipoint matrix continued-fraction expansions

This paper deals with the multipoint Cauer matrix continued-fraction expansion (MCFE) for model reduction of linear multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems with various numbers of inputs and outputs. A salient feature of the proposed MCFE approach to model reduction of MIMO systems with square transfer matrices is its equivalence to the matrix Pade approximation approach. The Cauer second form of the ordinary MCFE for a square transfer function matrix is generalized in this paper to a multipoint and nonsquare-matrix version. An interesting connection of the multipoint Cauer MCFE method to the multipoint matrix Pade approximation method is established. Also, algorithms for obtaining the reduced-degree matrix-fraction descriptions and reduced-dimensional state-space models from a transfer function matrix via the multipoint Cauer MCFE algorithm are presented. Practical advantages of using the multipoint Cauer MCFE are discussed and a numerical example is provided to illustrate the algorithms.