Minimal symmetric Darlington synthesis

Given a p × p Schur function S, we consider the problem of constructing a symmetric Darlington synthesis of minimal size. This amounts essentially to finding a stable all-pass square extension of S of minimal size. The characterization is done in terms of the multiplicities of the zeros. As a special case we obtain conditions for symmetric Darlington synthesis to be possible without increasing the McMillan degree for a symmetric rational contractive matrix which is strictly contractive in the right half-plane. This technique immediately extends to the case where, allowing for a higher dimension of the extension, we require no increase in the McMillan degree. Also in this case we obtain sharper results than those existing in the literature (see [1]).