ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Kalman canonical decomposition, which highlights the state variables that do not affect the input/output properties of the system, but which nevertheless may be very important. This is a classical subject of system theory, but still fundamental to discuss in order to understand the importance of non-minimal order systems in designing electrical circuits. In addition, this topic is preliminary to the advanced concepts of weak and strong controllability and observability that are faced in the book. Exhaustive examples in MATLAB are reported in order to clarify the key concepts reported in the chapter. The discussion refers to continuous-time systems, so there is no distinction between the controllability properties and the reachability of the system.
