State-transition equation
The state-transition equation is defined as the solution of the linear homogeneous state equation. The linear time-invariant state equation given by with state vector "x", control vector "u", vector "w" of additive disturbances, and fixed matrices "A", "B", and "E", can be solved by using either the classical method of solving linear differential equations or the Laplace transform method. The Laplace transform solution is presented in the following equations. The Laplace transform of the above equation yields where x(0) denotes initial-state vector evaluated at formula_3 . Solving for formula_4 gives So, the state-transition equation  can be obtained by taking inverse Laplace transform as The state-transition equation as derived above is useful only when the initial time is defined to be at formula_3 . In the study of control systems, specially discrete-data control systems, it is often desirable to break up a state-transition process into a sequence of transitions, so a more flexible initial time must be chosen. Let the initial time be represented by formula_8 and the corresponding initial state by formula_9, and assume that the input formula_10 and the disturbance formula_11 are applied at t≥0. Starting with the above equation by  setting formula_12 and solving for formula_13, we get Once the state-transition equation is determined, the output vector can be expressed as a function of the initial state.