Author Description

Distributed-order differential equations, a generalization of fractional calculus, are of increasing importance in many fields of science and engineering from the behaviour of complex dielectric media to the modelling of nonlinear systems. <br>This Brief will broaden the toolbox available to researchers interested in modeling, analysis, control and filtering. It contains contextual material outlining the progression from integer-order, through fractional-order to distributed-order systems. Stability issues are addressed with graphical and numerical results highlighting the fundamental differences between constant-, integer-, and distributed-order treatments. The power of the distributed-order model is demonstrated with work on the stability of noncommensurate-order linear time-invariant systems. Generic applications of the distributed-order operator follow: signal processing and viscoelastic damping of a mass–spring set up. <br>A new general approach to discretization of distributed-order derivatives and integrals is described. The Brief is rounded out with a consideration of likely future research and applications and with a number of MATLAB® codes to reduce repetitive coding tasks and encourage new workers in distributed-order systems.