Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
Mathematical Theory
In control theory, a Kalman decomposition provides a mathematical means to convert a representation of any linear time-invariant (LTI) control system to a form in which the system can be decomposed into a standard form which makes clear the observable and controllable components of the system. This decomposition results in the system being presented with a more illuminating structure, making it easier to draw conclusions on the system's reachable and observable subspaces.
Definition
Consider the continuous-time LTI control system
,
,
or the discrete-time LTI control system
,
.
The Kalman decomposition is defined as the realization of this system obtained by transforming the original matrices as follows:
,
,
,
,
where is the coordinate transformation matrix defined as
,
and whose submatrices are
: a matrix whose columns span the subspace of states which are both reachable and unobservable.
: chosen so that the columns of are a basis for the reachable subspace.
: chosen so that the columns of are a basis for the unobservable subspace.
: chosen so that is invertible.
It can be observed that some of these matrices may have dimension zero. For example, if the system is both observable and controllable, then , making the other matrices zero dimension.
Consequences
By using results from controllability and observability, it can be shown that the transformed system has matrices in the following form:
This leads to the conclusion that
The subsystem is both reachable and observable.
The subsystem is reachable.
The subsystem is observable.
Variants
A Kalman decomposition also exists for linear dynamical quantum systems. Unlike classical dynamical systems, the coordinate transformation used in this variant requires to be in a specific class of transformations due to the physical laws of quantum mechanics.