Self-sustained oscillations in discrete-time relay feedback systems

We study the problem of determining self-sustained oscillations in discrete-time linear time-invariant relay feedback systems. Concretely, we are interested in predicting when such a system admits unimodal oscillations, i.e., when the output has a single-peaked period. Under the assumption that the linear system is stable and has an impulse response that is strictly monotonically decreasing on its infinite support, we take a novel approach in using the framework of total positivity to address our main question. It is shown that unimodal self-oscillations can only exist if the number of positive and negative elements in a period coincides. Based on this result, we derive conditions for the existence of such oscillations, determine bounds on their periods, and address the question of uniqueness.