A knowledge of linear systems provides a firm foundation for the study of optimal control theory and many areas of system theory and signal processing. State-space techniques developed since the early sixties have been proved to be very effective. The main objective of this book is to present a brief and somewhat complete investigation on the theory of linear systems, with emphasis on these techniques, in both continuous-time and discrete-time settings, and to demonstrate an application to the study of elementary (linear and nonlinear) optimal control theory. An essential feature of the...