698 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO.

5, MAY 1997

number of data and model dimension. Though a Hilbert space setting A Simple Alternative to the Barbălat Lemma
is considered, least square algorithm is far from being optimal, and
its identification error may diverge as the model dimension increases Gang Tao
(“peaking effect”). Computation of the optimal algorithm appears to
be hard, but a linear almost-optimal algorithm is presented, which is
easy to be computed, is not affected by the peaking effect, and is Abstract— This paper gives a simple proof of the property that if a
asymptotically optimal. signal is square integrable and has a bounded derivative, then the signal
converges to zero asymptotically.
Index Terms—Asymptotic stability.
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Manuscript received October 2, 1995; revised March 20, 1996 and March
25, 1996.
The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA (e-mail: jt9s@virginia.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9286(97)03383-7.

0018–9286/97$10.00  1997 IEEE