Output feedback exponential stabilization of a nonlinear 1-D wave equation with boundary input

This paper develops systematically the output feedback exponential stabilization for a one-dimensional unstable/anti-stable wave equation where the control boundary suffers from both internal nonlinear uncertainty and external disturbance. Using only two displacement signals, we propose a disturbance estimator that not only can estimate successfully the disturbance in the sense that the error is in L²(0, ∞) but also is free high-gain. With the estimated disturbance, we design a state observer that is exponentially convergent to the state of original system. An observer-based output feedback stabilizing control law is proposed. The disturbance is then canceled in the feedback loop by its approximated value. The closed-loop system is shown to be exponentially stable and it can be guaranteed that all internal signals are uniformly bounded.