Analysis of slow convergence regions in adaptive systems

We examine convergence properties of errors in a class of adaptive systems that corresponds to adaptive control of linear time-invariant plants with state variables accessible. We demonstrate the existence of a sticking region in the error space where the state errors move with a finite velocity independent of their magnitude. We show that these properties are also exhibited by adaptive systems with closed-loop reference models which have been demonstrated to exhibit improved transient performance as well as those that include an integral control in the inner-loop. A simulation study is included to illustrate the size of this sticking region and its dependence on various system parameters.